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THE FONDREN LECTURES FOR 1921 

Delivered Before the SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 
of SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY 



MAKING THE WORLD 
CHRISTIAN: 

THE ESSENTIAL OBJECTIVES 
IN MISSIONARY ENDEAVOR 



BY 

JOHN MONROE MOORE, 

D.D., Ph.D. (Yale) 



The Fondren Lectures 

Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Fondren, members of St. 
PauVs Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Hous- 
ton, Texas, gave to Southern Methodist University 
on May 10, 1919, the sum of $10,000, the proceeds 
from which were to be used in the establishment of 
the Fondren Lectures on Christian Missions. The 
following paragraphs from the conditions of the 
original gift will set forth the spirit and purpose 
of the Foundation. 

"The interest on the investment shall be used 
annually in procuring some competent person to de- 
liver lectures on Christian Missions under the aus- 
pices of Southern Methodist University, some phase 
of this great cause being always the central theme 
of such lectures. . . . This fund is dedicated to the 
foundation of a lectureship on Christian Missions in 
consideration of other donations made for the up- 
building of Southern Methodist University, and 
especially the School of Theology thereof and in 
the hope that something of good may come directly 
therefrom and that others more able to give largely 
may be inspired to devote some portion of the means 
which they hold in trust as stewards of the Lord 
to the increase of said fund or to some other laud- 
able enterprise of our church." 



MAKING THE WORLD 
CHRISTIAN: 

THE ESSENTIAL OBJECTIVES 
IN MISSIONARY ENDEAVOR 



BY 

JOHN MONROE MOORE, 

D.D., Ph.D., (Yale) 




new yfSJr YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1922, 
By George H. Doran Company 



x *v 



Printed in the United States of America 

JUL ?4 *?? 

©CI.Afi81055 



PREFACE 

A tour of the world in 1908 as an Editor, 
to study and report through the columns of 
the paper what he saw of missions, eight 
years' experience as a secretary of home 
missions, and four years' service as the gen- 
eral superintendent of the missionary opera- 
tions in Brazil of one of the leading denomi- 
nations, may be said to have furnished the 
background of the lectures herein presented 
to the public. At this time when the mission- 
ary activities of the evangelical churches of 
the United States and Great Britain are so 
aggressive and so comprehensive it seems well 
that the essential objectives in missionary 
endeavor be clearly defined and duly empha- 
sized to the end that the strategy of missions 
be most intelligently formulated and effectu- 
ally applied. Missionaries on the field and 
administrators at and from the home base con- 
tinually need and require fresh interpretations 
of the missionary task that they may the more 
adequately set into action the forces and in- 



vi PREFACE 

fluences that will eventuate in making the 
world Christian. The purpose of these lec- 
tures is to draw attention anew to this need and 
outline some outstanding elements of this pre- 
eminent task of the Christian Church. 

The lectures were prepared in the midst 
of the most exacting episcopal duties, with 
time severely limited. Lecture V was not 
delivered as the time was not sufficient to allow 
its preparation before the date set for the 
delivery of the series. The other five were 
delivered in April, 1921, before Dean Paul B. 
Kern and the Faculty and students of the 
School of Theology of Southern Methodist 
University, Dallas, Texas, Rev. H. A. Boaz, 
D.D., the president of the University, Mr. 
and Mrs. W. W. Fondren, the founders of 
the Lectureship, and Rev. and Mrs. J. Walter 
Mills, the friends of the founders who had 
much to do in inspiring the foundation gift. 
They go forth to the public with the hope and 
prayer that they will make some contribution, 
however small, to making the world Christian. 

John M. Moore. 
Nashville, Tennessee. 



CONTENTS 



LECTURE I: 

INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 

LECTURE II: 

RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 

LECTURE III: 

CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS . 

LECTURE IV: 

ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES . . 

LECTURE V: 

VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS . . 

LECTURE VI: 

CONSTRUCTING AN ADEQUATE FAITH 



PAGB 
11 



62 



122 



174 



224 



265 



MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 



LECTURE I: INTERPRETING RE- 
LIGIOUS BELIEFS 



Religion is the fundamental thing in hu- 
man life. It is distinctive of man. The great 
French philosopher and theologian Auguste 
Sabatier writes: "Why am I religious? Be- 
cause I cannot help it. It is a moral necessity 
of my being." He regards humanity as in- 
curably religious. However low in mental de- 
velopment, however crude in manner of life, 
man worships. He recognizes a being upon 
whom he is dependent and to whom he is in 
some measure accountable, if not responsible. 
Pascal once exclaimed: "The eternal silence 
of the infinite spaces terrifies me." The primi- 
tive peoples no less have felt the burden of 
this mysterious silence, and have sought pro- 
tection in the objects of their worship. 

Men have at times arisen and endeavored to 
throw off this conscious necessity of religion, 
this summons by the voices of life to worship, 
but they have ultimately arrived at the place 
where they must begin a new search for an 

11 



12 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

adequate religious faith. Comte, the great 
French positivist, predicted the extinction in 
the human soul of all disposition to religion, 
but before he had concluded his work he had 
attempted to found a new religion, clumsily 
copied from what he had hitherto known. He 
came to realize the force of the devotional in- 
stincts and religious feelings in the life of peo- 
ples, and to believe that only by religion could 
the edifice of future society be cemented. 
Herbert Spencer began with an "Unknow- 
able" as an undetermined and unconscious 
force, but eventually he, too, came to pro- 
nounce religion eternal. 

By religion humanity takes its rise, and 
by religion it is established and completed. 
People are just what their religions have in- 
spired and led them to be. In the Orient the 
civilization is exactly what might be expected 
from the religious beliefs that have been domi- 
nant. Religion has not grown so much out of 
the life of the people as the life of the people 
has been fashioned and accommodated to their 
religious conceptions. Mohammedanism has 
made its own world and holds it fast by the 
most irrevocable decrees. India can never rise 
to a new estate until it is awakened from the 
sleep of death and extinction which Hinduism 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 13 

induces. China will be chained to a dead past 
so long as the ancestral tablets are the prime 
objects or means of worship. Japan grows 
great as it outgrows its primitive faiths. A 
people's advancement cannot outrun its religi- 
ous enlightenment. The old stock cannot be 
grafted upon with any hope of a new and vig- 
orous growth. The change needed must be at 
the roots. All human development springs 
from religion and ends in it. Humanity can 
come to thorough establishment and comple- 
tion only through a religion which breathes re- 
demption and inspires to fullness of life and 
destiny. 

"Religious beliefs do not die; they are sim- 
ply transformed," says Sabatier. There is 
comfort in the view that religion is immortal, 
but there is the other fact that outward ex- 
pressions of religious beliefs are subject to 
change through the forces that may be brought 
to bear upon them, and that religion may be 
made richer, more abundant, and more satis- 
fying with reflection and the experiences of 
life. This lays an inevitable obligation upon 
those who are responsible for the establishment 
of the highest form of religious thought, life 
and service. The ancient thinkers, whether 
priests or philosophers, maintained an attitude 



14 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

of pure indifference toward religions other 
than the one of their environment. Professor 
Morris Jastrow in his "Study of Religion" 
says: "If the question were put to a Greek, 
or an Egyptian, or a Babylonian, as to the 
reason for the existence of various religions 
in the world, he would have failed to under- 
stand what the question meant. It was per- 
fectly natural to a Greek that the religion in 
Egypt should be different from the one pre- 
vailing in Hellas. How could it be otherwise? 
The countries were different and therefore the 
gods were different. A difference in religion 
was accordingly accepted with the same com- 
placency as was a difference in dress or in 
language." Hebrew prophets brushed aside 
the gods of other nations and exalted their own 
Jehovah with little sense of responsibility for 
the religious life of their neighbors. Whether 
Greek philosopher or Hebrew prophet, the in- 
difference to the manifold manifestations of 
religion was the same. To this day indiffer- 
ence to other faiths characterizes practically all 
religious teachers except those of Mohammed- 
anism and Christianity. Both these are dili- 
gent and vigorous in their endeavors to win 
the world to their beliefs. 

Christianity in the beginning assumed very 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 15 

much the same attitude as that of its great 
progenitor, Judaism. It looked with more or 
less contempt on all other faiths. Since God 
had revealed Himself to only one people, there 
could be only one form of religious truth — 
all others were due either to ignorance or dom- 
inant evil forces. By the preaching of the true 
religion the others were to be overcome. Such 
was its early reasoning. Later more severe 
means were employed to induce the "heathen" 
to take a more sympathetic and safe relation 
to this one true faith. Christianity suffered 
greatly while the old Roman imperialism was 
in strength, but with its wane there came a 
new assertion of this all-conquering faith, and 
the attempts to stamp out heathenism and to 
crush Judaism make dark pages in the history 
of the Christian Church. The Jews for cen- 
turies were treated as a hardened people to 
whom there seemed to be no approach for 
the Christ gospel. The conflict with Moham- 
medanism was void of human feelings. All 
ideals of peace and good will were laid aside 
in the bitter warfare with the "infidel" foes. 
Mohammedanism was looked upon as the in- 
carnation of the Devil. Christianity and the 
Church had taken its attitude and its course 
of action from Rome and maintained a spirit 



16 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

of pride and intolerance which continued 
through fifteen centuries and which was 
changed only by degrees through the next 
three centuries. The change came into full 
effect only with the vigor of the modern mis- 
sionary movement of evangelical Christianity 
in its program of enlightenment and regenera- 
tion. 

The conquests of Christianity were the pride 
and boast of the Church during the first dozen 
centuries. The sword and crucifix were com- 
panion instruments in establishing its domains. 
The Christians acquired a military vocabulary 
in these ages of conflict, and unfortunately, 
military terms still remain in the speech of 
the Church for the characterization of its move- 
ments. Triumph, victory, advance, cam- 
paigns, conquest, are words used to express 
the manner of its enlargement. Christianity 
should now assume such an attitude toward 
the world and its own task as to render this 
very terminology obsolete. The vocabulary 
to-day should be marked by the words: seeds, 
cultivation, growth, increase, harvest, life. 
Religion cannot be properly interpreted to the 
non-Christian world through the terminology 
of the battlefield. The most severe criticism 
which the Orient has passed upon Christianity 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 17 

is that it represents itself as a religion of force, 
authority and domination, creating nations of 
like attitudes. While it is possessed of these 
qualities, its means of expansion rest not with 
the weapons of war, but with the utensils of 
husbandry and the agencies common to life 
processes. Christianity goes to the non- Chris- 
tian world upon no campaign of conquest, but 
upon a mission of love, light and life. Its atti- 
tude will in no small way be determinative in 
its success. Its teachers and promulgators 
must be able to declare in the most convincing 
terms what Christianity has to contribute to 
the illumination and interpretation of the most 
fundamental, essential and precious of all hu- 
man beliefs. 

The Christian Church has come to realize 
that the power of Christianity is due to its 
transforming influence through its creative en- 
ergy. It supplies a new wine, sparkling and 
strong, and it rends the wineskins of old con- 
ceptions into which it may be poured. It scat- 
ters marvelous seeds of wondrous possibilities 
in the soils of all civilizations. It transmits a 
light with the softness of the morning and the 
strength of the noonday. It kindles fires as 
genial as springtime for the souls of men but 
as a burning furnace for the wickedness of the 



18 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

world. Its supreme strength is not in its abil- 
ity to destroy but in its capacity to fill out and 
complete the measure of human possibilities. 
It carries the creative energy that brought the 
universe into existence and that has maintained 
the onward course of God's government in His 
world. It produces and reproduces the ele- 
ments of redemption and regeneration by 
which man comes into a new estate, views life 
with a new vision, and is quickened to heroic 
endeavor for a great destiny. It makes lumi- 
nous the past and lights up the way of the 
future. It is a generator of light for the mind 
and spirit of man. It is life, the life of God 
in man. Creation is the life of God in action. 
Christianity can never be less than productive 
of all that God would express in the human 
being and the human race. 

Christianity interprets religion as creative 
energy acting in and upon the human life to 
the accomplishment of the eternal unchanging 
purpose of God. The religion of Christ gets 
not only to the God of resources, but also to 
the God of sources. Man aspires to reach the 
sources. When he finds himself he rebels at 
being a pensioner, a dependent. He wants to 
get at the stored energies for use in the dis- 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 19 

covered processes of development and achieve- 
ment. The religion that reveals the eternal 
purpose of God develops this same purpose in 
the lives and institutions of men and opens the 
way for sublime effort and gives assurance of 
a blessed destiny. If that which exists in God 
can be and will be transmitted to man a new 
creation is assured. Paul says, "There is a 
new creation whenever a man comes to be in 
Christ, what is old is gone, the new has come." 
Man is made master of the major forces op- 
erating in the real world through his relation 
to the divine source of all power. He springs 
to the life processes that bear on to the ful- 
fillment of personality. He is a new creation 
and is impelled to the production of a new 
world life. Religion as interpreted by Chris- 
tianity is a matter of life, force, progress, 
achievement. It makes real and vivid the pur- 
poses of God and commits men to them. It 
builds up a Kingdom of God. It overturns 
and assimilates the kingdom of evil. It gives 
man dominion over the works of the great 
Creator, and drives him to realize that God 
has crowned him with glory and honor. What 
other religion than Christianity gives such 
worth to man and such character to God? 



20 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

II 

Christianity has come to its time of supreme 
testing as it has reached its day of largest op- 
portunity. Its intelligence, its will, its power, 
are being tried by the most multifarious and 
exacting demands. These very demands are 
indisputable evidence of the world's belief in 
the immeasurable possibilities of the Christian 
religion and the limitless capabilities of the 
Christian Church. No such demands are be- 
ing made upon any other religious faith or 
organism. Of Buddhism, Confucianism, Mo- 
hammedanism, or even Judaism, nothing is ex- 
pected comparable to what is asked of Chris- 
tianity. It is universally recognized that the 
forces that give validity, scope and course to 
modern civilization have had their origin in 
Christian sources and have come to their pres- 
ent effectiveness in the atmosphere of Christian 
teachings. Not half the world's population 
know anything of the teaching of Christianity, 
nor of the Christ from which they sprang. 
The non-Christian peoples have had the ad- 
vantage of priority of civilization and they can 
boast of a nobility of ancestry and a superiority 
of achievement in the centuries when the pro- 
genitors of the present mighty nations were 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 21 

but rude tribes dressed in skins and dwelling 
in tents. Yet force has been lodged with these 
peoples who took over and took in the beliefs 
which Christianity has delivered. 

The question to-day is not whether the world 
will have Christianity or Buddhism, or Mo- 
hammedanism, or Judaism. The question is, 
will the world have Christianity? If Chris- 
tianity cannot meet the demands which the 
world now makes upon it there is no thought 
that one or the other of the existing religions 
will be tried. In recent years very much sym- 
pathetic study has been given to a comparison 
of religions. The Philosophy of Religion has 
occupied the best philosophical thinkers. The 
holdings of all faiths have been laid upon the 
table and their most faithful and capable de- 
fenders have been called upon to interpret 
them. In the light of full knowledge and by 
the aid of the best intelligence the religions 
of the earth have been estimated. These 
studies have broadened the conceptions of the 
real contents of all religions, but they have not 
lessened the sense of the extraordinary value, 
superiority and inclusiveness of Christianity. 
There is not much expectation that some 
new religion will appear. The testing now 
for a religion for the human race is upon 



22 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Christianity. Beyond that there is only 
darkness. 

Christianity has come to this place of testing, 
to the place of unparalleled responsibility, 
largely because of the claims of its adherents. 
They have never proclaimed it except as the 
universal religion, the only hope of the salva- 
tion of the human race. They have confidently 
and rigorously maintained that all genuine re- 
ligion, truth and power are embraced in Chris- 
tianity and that whatever else may be found 
in any other religion is spurious or superfluous. 
These claims have been made in the light of 
the highest revelation and of the best developed 
intelligence. Neither the ancient nor modern 
world has held a religion which has not been 
thoroughly scrutinized and estimated by the 
adherents of Christianity. They have found 
no cause for lowering their claims of the super- 
lative value of Christianity, the inclusiveness 
of its truth, and the transcendency of its power 
for the redemption and edification of the 
world. This Christian consciousness of the ab- 
solute superiority of Christianity has been rig- 
idly maintained since the apostolic era. 

The fact cannot be controverted that Chris- 
tianity has set going great currents of multi- 
plied energy in the human will. It has turned 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 23 

the dream of the half -awake into the visions 
of vast possibilities which have issued in sub- 
lime effort and masterly movement. Man, 
under the creative power of this marvelous 
faith, has passed from the state of merely a 
consumer of the Creator's beneficence to a pro- 
ducer of merit in his own name and by his 
own wisdom and capabilities. The very atmos- 
phere of human life becomes charged with a 
creative energy where Christianity is in force 
and control. Man not only has lifted before 
him great prizes but raised up in him great 
resources. Under the inspiration and force of 
this Christ-energy the possibilities of humanity 
are put beyond conceivable limits. 

That there is a dynamic in the Christian re- 
ligion that makes for human assertion, social 
enlargement and racial development, can 
scarcely be gainsaid. Wherever it has been 
introduced humanity has come to a higher 
level, and whenever it has been refused, neg- 
lected or withdrawn, decline and deterioration 
have followed. It energizes capabilities, focal- 
izes activities, and spiritualizes motives and ob- 
jectives. The human race has wrought well 
under its tutelage. It has put no blight upon 
any land where its essential principles and fun- 
damental teachings have been emphasized. 



24 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Rude tribes have grown into great forces for 
civilization, righteousness and justice under the 
spirit of this religious faith. Men rise up and 
move forward under the influence of Christi- 
anity irrespective of their race, their history, 
or previous or existing conditions of life and 
thought. It is not boasting but only stating a 
well-recognized fact to say that the nations of 
first importance, the institutions of largest 
human influence, the wealth of greatest pro- 
portions, the governments of widest sweep, are 
to a prevailing degree under Christian aus- 
pices. Are these accidents in human move- 
ments or the normal products of the matchless 
force which Christianity claims has issued 
from the Person and teachings of Jesus, the 
Nazarene? 

No one would claim that these great nations 
with their superior institutions, massive wealth, 
and mighty governments are genuinely Chris- 
tian. They are not. The Great War brought 
no keener shock to Christian men and women 
than the fearful realization that humanity may 
enjoy the fruits of a Christian civilization and 
claim a personal assurance for another world 
and yet be wanting in the Christian attitudes, 
tempers and purposes for this world. The 
marvel of it all is that nations and peoples so 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 25 

meagerly Christian have risen to such pre- 
eminence in power, possessions and influence. 
The question arises instinctively, What might 
they not do were they completely directed by 
the genius of Jesus Christ and impelled to 
fashion their forces to the accomplishment of 
that to which His sublime principles would 
lead? The entire effort of the Christian 
Church is, and should be, to get Christianity 
fully tried out in the earth. 

Christianity is now facing a more intelligent 
non-Christian world than since the first two 
centuries. A new sense of power has been 
awakened and a new sense of racial impor- 
tance has been developed among the peoples 
that have been the objects of Christian propa- 
ganda. The adherents and exponents of other 
faiths have risen to the defensive and are he- 
roically endeavoring to meet Christianity upon 
the thresholds of their supposed dominions. 
They have gone so far as to employ the imple- 
ments and agencies common to the Christian 
Church, just as their countries have imported 
the implements of Christian civilization to take 
the place of what their own manner of life, 
thought and worship have produced. The 
question must be answered anew, What is there 
in Christianity, and what has it done, to merit 



26 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

primacy among the world's faiths ? The evan- 
gelical Christian propaganda has been in 
course more than a century among non-Chris- 
tian peoples. What has been wrought in this 
time in their civilizations and in their processes 
of life, thought and action? Some new power 
has stirred the world prodigiously in the last 
ten decades. Has Christianity released ener- 
gies that might be expected to bring forth some 
such results? Has Christianity been creative 
of new forces and vaster areas of human en- 
deavor? 

Christianity's appeal to the world to-day 
must be made upon its record and the ration- 
ality and compass of its projected plans. It 
must be able to show clearly in what respect 
Christianity has contributed to the religious 
endowments and acquirements of mankind; 
reconstructed thought-life in keeping with its 
enlarged view of the world, God and human- 
ity; elevated moral values; and given to the 
peoples it has touched a religious faith equal 
to the demands of maturity of the individual 
and the race. Productive beliefs vitalize the 
processes of human development. By that 
standard Christianity and all other religions 
must be measured. Man's development finds 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 27 

legitimate measurement in the sublimity of his 
religious conceptions and worship, the com- 
prehensiveness and force of his system of 
thought, his efficiency in handling the resources 
of nature, his estimate of moral values and in 
the adequacy of his beliefs to cover and con- 
trol the highest life interests. Christianity's 
aspiration, if not obligation, is to make the 
world Christian, and the Christianization of 
the world is the end and purpose of the well- 
awakened, modern Church. What has been 
done in consummation of this end? What re- 
mains to be done with the existing religious 
conceptions of the vast majority of mankind, 
with the mental life of the people, and with 
their sense of relation to God, the world in 
which they live and the group life of the race 
before they can think and live Christ, and 
thereby establish forever in the earth the 
Kingdom of God? What is it that must be 
done in the entire body of humanity and in the 
entirety of humanity in order to complete 
Christianization? These questions are not only 
legitimate, but the answers to them are neces- 
sary to any intelligent, comprehensive system 
of missionary propaganda of the modern 
evangelical Church. 



28 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

III 

Christianity must outline anew its task. 
The modern missionary movement has put it 
face to face with the faiths of mankind and 
the conditions of humanity which attend those 
faiths. There are backward races that present 
a pitiable lack of any genuine comprehension 
of religion and possess little other than bar- 
baric cults of animism. Practically half the 
people of the world are in India, China and 
Japan, where ethnic faiths are dominant in 
the life, thought and purpose of the people. 
The Moslem world and the Jewish race re- 
main stolid in their adherence to the faiths of 
their fathers notwithstanding their oppor- 
tunities for correctly knowing the gospel of 
Christ. More than half of mankind have prac- 
tically no knowledge of Christianity, and even 
a larger percentage have no concern for other 
than a racial religion. Of the so-called Chris- 
tian world, Romanism with its political ec- 
clesiasticism and its glaringly erroneous inter- 
pretations bearing the marks of the old im- 
perial Roman life and power, holds a large 
portion in its iron grip, while the darkened 
forms of Coptic, Armenian and Greek faiths 
hold little less. That is the world that evangel- 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 29 

ical Christianity faces to-day. One is forced 
to say with Lessing: "The Christian religion 
has been tried for eighteen centuries; but the 
religion of Christ remains to be tried." Will it 
be tried? What is it that Christianity must do 
to make the world Christian? Can it be done? 
There are those who consider themselves Chris- 
tians, and in personal character and hope they 
are such, who do not expect the world to be- 
come Christian. They consider this world a 
place to get Christians out of and not into. 
But the spirit, purpose and plan of modern 
missions are to make the world Christian and 
all that is therein or pertains thereto. Is the 
plan impracticable and the task impossible? 
Faith makes but one answer. 

"Religious beliefs do not die," says Sabatier; 
"they are simply transformed." If his posi- 
tion is correct the strategy of missions will be 
the employment of the means and agencies 
that will set going new currents of religious 
thought, new batteries of religious power, new 
generators of religious light in order to effect 
that transformation. That which the mission- 
ary finds of real religious value in the religion 
of any people is to be treasured. It forms 
the "known" in his effort to lead to that which 
is the "unknown" to the people. The first 



30 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

question will be, How can it be determined 
that any religious element has real religious 
value? Has the missionary standards for 
making this determination? The great 
ethnic faiths of the Orient have become the 
foundations of vast civilizations of extended 
history and immense influence. Out of these 
civilizations have arisen great minds and 
great souls who have been sustained from 
mighty mystic sources. China was a great 
nation when Abraham started on his quest 
for a new habitation. India was the 
source of the rich Sanscrit literature before 
Europe knew the meaning of culture. These 
peoples are not novices in the world of action, 
thought or conduct. They are not without 
pride in their past, or contentment in their 
present, or confidence in their future. Their 
religious faiths are the heritage of the cen- 
turies. What is there of real religious value 
in them? This question would seem to be 
primary and its answer would determine the 
course of any process that may be entered 
upon to transform and reconstruct them so as 
to make them adequate to the religious needs 
of the people. 

There are those who flout the idea of trans- 
forming a religious faith. They hold to the 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 31 

old view that there is only one religion and the 
only thing to do is to destroy the other, root 
and branch. That smacks of bold fanaticism 
and is a hazardous process, for as Professor 
Jastrow says: "Skepticism is the corollary of 
fanaticism" and has always ensued. The 
death of a religious belief means usually the 
funeral of religion. No man has the right to 
destroy another's faith. He has only the right 
to supplant it with a better. To-day in all the 
world where the old faiths have been ruth- 
lessly exposed and destroyed and the recon- 
struction process has not kept pace, agnos- 
ticism is rampant. When man finds his own 
faith unfounded, he leaps, almost inevitably, 
to the conclusion that no man's faith is better 
founded. The missionary to-day faces in 
China and Japan greater obstacles in the new 
agnosticism of the educated and the forceful 
than in the old inadequate and often spurious 
faiths of the common people. Europe in its 
revolt against the ecclesiasticism of Rome and 
of Greek patriarchs has all but become sub- 
merged in the dark waters of agnosticism and 
atheism. Latin America has an intellectual 
and political leadership that no longer retains 
faith in the Church as a medium of religion. 
Faith in the old things has been broken down 



32 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

and faith in the better has not been created. 
That is the peril of the world to-day. Chris- 
tianity can make little or no appeal to a people 
wanting in any religion. 

That all religions have value must be recog- 
nized, and also that religious values cannot be 
graded according to the localities and people 
that hold them any more than can the dia- 
mond's brilliancy, weight and worth. The 
standards of truth are not geographical, nor 
even ethnical. They are psychical and prag- 
matic. Even the origin of truth does not im- 
pair its validity. The standards of value for 
all truth may be determined by the purposes 
to be met. Barnard's discovery of the fifth 
satellite of Jupiter was of no value to chemis- 
try. The Crookes tubes added nothing to the 
art of healing, but they made possible the 
X-ray, whose remedial properties can scarcely 
be overestimated. The discovery of America 
by Columbus added not only to man's knowl- 
edge of the earth, but it opened a new world, 
cleared the way for a new civilization, and 
made possible the production of a greater 
political power than had ever been known. 
The discovery of ether was the beginning of 
modern surgery, the marvel of the age. The 
vaccine virus has become the forerunner of 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 33 

the vast company of serums that now reduce 
the malignancy of ravaging diseases. The 
purposes to which any truth may be put may 
become cumulative as this truth leads to other 
truth. Chemistry has attained a new and 
greatly enlarged and enlarging sphere as it 
has become creative. Creative knowledge is 
a knowledge with power and multiplies ener- 
gies as it expands its realm. But such values 
are neither increased nor diminished by the 
nationalities of discoverers or producers. They 
are measured by the high standards of worth 
to the race and their possibilities for the pur- 
poses for which they are required. 

In like manner the purposes of religion, the 
ends to be met, the aim to be achieved, must 
determine the values of any religious concep- 
tion, belief, or act. These purposes, ends and 
aims are not local, national nor ethnic, but uni- 
versal. The standards of value which they 
erect and require cannot be set aside, ignored, 
or even disregarded. It is sometimes said 
"that peoples' religion is good enough for 
them. Do not disturb them with another." 
Religion that is not adequate to mankind uni- 
versal is not competent for any particular part 
of the race. It is the element in man that is 
common to the human race that calls for re- 



34 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ligion. Ethnic faiths came to their form and 
force in the ages when the commonality of man 
was not recognized, and they decline as rapidly 
as this commonality is realized. The Jew has 
maintained his ethnic faith amid the untoward 
influences of the world by his untiring em- 
phasis on racial solidarity. It is that which 
has kept him from accepting Christianity, 
which he well knows and for the most part 
highly appreciates. So long as racial demar- 
cations can be rigidly maintained and the ele- 
ment common to man be held in subordina- 
tion, so long can the ethnic faiths be kept 
dominant. This is true with the Japanese, the 
Chinese, the East Indian. The Japanese race 
instinct will demand and exalt a Japanese re- 
ligion. But Japanese who are open to the 
world tides and aspire to participate in world 
currents and world movements with the con- 
sciousness of world citizenship and the sense of 
world responsibility will soon discover and ad- 
mit the inadequacy of a Japanese religion. 
The same is true of China and India. The 
values of a religion must be estimated in terms 
of man the universal as well as man the par- 
ticular or man the racial. 

Acquaintance with the religions of the 
peoples to whom they are sent is a primary 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 35 

requisite of the Christian propagandists. Paul 
the apostle, the great defender, interpreter and 
promulgator of Christianity, knew Judaism in 
its last detail and was as able in exposition of 
it as its strongest ecclesiastical teachers. He 
could not only point out the real principles 
and practices of Judaism, but he possessed a 
power of interpretation which made him un- 
answerable. He knew thoroughly the religion 
of the Greeks and was familiar with their 
philosophy. There was a mighty reach to his 
words because of his mastery of current 
thought. The Christian teacher must be an 
interpreter of religion and entirely capable of 
analyzing and estimating every expression and 
form of religious belief and determining what 
element can be made basic in the construction 
of an adequate faith. 

There is now religion enough in the world, 
if by religion is meant devotion, worship, 
prayers to gods, efforts at finding the Supreme 
Being, and the outbreathings toward holy 
things. What country could be more religious 
than India from that point of view, but from 
the viewpoint of Christianity, what land 
could be more in soul-darkness? What is it 
that the entire Orient must have in order to 
receive light and a new life? Evidently there 



36 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

must be a change at the very center. Before 
Copernicus there was just as much sunlight, 
just as kindly a moon, just as superb firma- 
ment of stars as after his marvelous labors. 
But the movements of these upper worlds 
were confusing to the astronomers, who re- 
quired system and reliable laws by which to 
set courses and determine age-long activities. 
Hitherto in their calculations the earth had 
been recognized as the center of the heavenly 
system. Copernicus, without depreciating the 
importance of the earth, declared that system 
would be possible only if the sun were made 
the center. That was the beginning of the new 
astronomy, the new navigation, and the open- 
ing of the modern world. The religions of 
the Orient, whatever their light and beauty, 
can never explain the world, its forces, its 
movements, and its destinies till they change 
their centers. They can never come right un- 
til they recognize the Sun of righteousness as 
the center of our human system and the con- 
troller of our earthly world. They must be 
brought to see that He is not only the source 
of light and warmth, but that He creates the 
forces of life, holds by His own mighty centri- 
petal power the bodies in their orbits and the 
worlds in their courses, and enables them to 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 37 

fulfill their destinies in accord with the pur- 
pose of the Creator. The supreme question 
before the Christian is, How can this new 
heavenly system be brought to the understand- 
ing and acceptance of the Orientals? 



rv 

In the analysis of the civilization of the 
Orient nothing is more outstanding, more im- 
pressive and more oppressive than the fearful 
intellectual and spiritual haze that envelops 
the fundamentals of life. There is a mystical 
groping after the meaning of things with a 
pall of uncertainty resting on the most pre- 
cious of religious beliefs. Life lacks direct- 
ness. Circumlocution marks all business, 
diplomacy, engagements and the common re- 
lations of the people. Religion is wanting in 
clear-cut aims and definite vitalizing purpose. 
The devotion is beautiful, the sacrifices are ex- 
tensive, and the worship is profoundly sincere, 
but the end of it all is not clear, and its value 
not exalting. All kinds of religious degrada- 
tions are current and the superstitions are all 
but revolting. Even the religious practices of 
the highest are pitiably below what their in- 
telligence would seemingly warrant. The 



38 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

aristocratic, large-minded Chinese will wor- 
ship before the ancestral tablets and make 
offerings to the spirits of their progenitors. 
The rich, superior Hindus will ceremoniously 
bathe in the muddy waters of the Ganges with 
all the manifestations of true worship. The 
temples exhibit scenes of distressing intellec- 
tual and spiritual darkness. Japan, China, 
Burmah and India present different aspects 
of life and thought, but the same haze is over 
all. It is this which makes the Orient a thing 
apart. It is the home of occultism. Kipling 
was so impressed and oppressed by the ob- 
scurantism as to write : 

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, 

And never the twain shall meet 
Till earth and sky stand presently 
At God's great judgment seat." 

It may be profitable to review briefly the 
salient features of the non- Christian faiths. 
By doing so it will be clearly seen that the 
Orient has never had an adequate comprehen- 
sion and valuation of personality. Right here 
is its supreme defect. The appalling haze that 
holds the people in their indecision and indirec- 
tion is largely, if not altogether, due to this 
fact. The ethnic faiths discount personality 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 39 

and lay bases for its extinction. Taoism is 
perhaps the oldest cult in China. Tao means 
"The Way," or "The Way of the World" or 
"Nature." It is a power immaterial, invisible, 
inaudible, intangible, ubiquitous, indefinable, 
eternal, which finds expression in various 
forms. Pope has all but represented the same 
thought. 

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, nature the soul, 
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame, 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent, 
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part 
As full, as perfect, in heir as heart, 
To It no high, no low, no great, no small, 
It fills, It bounds, connects and equals all." 

Laotze, the founder of Taoism, took his con- 
trolling idea from the orderly operations of 
nature, which seemed to be accomplished 
without effort or purpose. He consequently 
made inaction the cornerstone of his doctrine 
and cultivated it as the chief virtue. He re- 
nounced learning and wisdom, developed in- 
decision and irresoluteness, and made much of 
the vacant and stupid look. While the meta- 



40 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

physical teachings of Laotze were beyond the 
common people, the practical corollaries found 
ready response in their natural aptitudes. 
Irresponsible nature became the teacher of 
lethargy and ambiguity to capable, respon- 
sible man. 

Confucius was a political thinker and was 
chiefly concerned with government, order, 
rules and regulations of life and conduct. He 
was a great teacher of high ethics, and really 
founded the moral code that has been domi- 
nant in China for twenty-four centuries. Con- 
fucianism has elevated moral values for indi- 
viduals and the state, but has failed to direct 
religious instinct to worthy ends and the for- 
mulation of adequate religious conceptions. 
Confucius was in reality an agnostic, sought 
no god and made no claims to the establish- 
ment of a religion. It is the entire absence of 
all genuine religious truth in his system of 
philosophy that allowed, if not encouraged, 
the direful idolatry which has afflicted China. 
The forests are filled with temples and shrines, 
and sportive spirits are in command of all na- 
ture. The spirits of the soil come all but first 
in the worship of the people. Multitudes of 
gods are acknowledged, of which nature is the 
mother. The secret of this religious chaos is, 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 41 

Confucius, like Laotze, had no vital philosophy 
of man. Personality received little or no em- 
phasis by them. Nature, dull and speechless, 
drove their thoughts to the possibilities of the 
impending silence. They heard not the voice 
of man calling to the clearer heights and the 
nobler views of life and the world. They left 
the people at the mercy of their own imagina- 
tions, in the midst of an awe-inspiring and ter- 
ror-awakening world. 

The worship of ancestors has great impor- 
tance in the modern religion of the Chinese 
people. It is their belief that the spirits of the 
dead linger about their old habitations to 
watch over, protect and prosper the living. 
The dead have much the same needs, motives 
and labors as the living. It is incumbent upon 
the living to cherish and honor them and pro- 
vide habitations and furnish them with articles 
of use and desire appropriate to their calling 
and rank on earth. Such a belief cements the 
family bond, creates the consciousness of its 
unity and perpetuity through the generations 
and cultivates parental love and filial devotion. 
But it also puts the leaden hand of the past 
upon the aspirations and movements of the 
present. It provides such a system of disem- 
bodied spirits as to make the world a grewsome 



42 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

dwelling place, and life one long effort at the 
evasion of any offense to those who populate 
the spirit world. Demons, ghosts and vam- 
pires create a population for China fully as 
dense as that which tabernacles in the body. 
As a consequence demonology is the dominat- 
ing force in the life of the people. Spirits! 
Spirits! Spirits! These monopolize the in- 
terests and the better powers of the Chinese. 
There can be no remedy for this fearful in- 
tellectual and spiritual state save a proper 
philosophy or personality. 

Whatever may be said of the ethnic religious 
faiths, Buddhism and Hinduism control the 
beliefs of the Orient. An exception must be 
made of about one-fifth of the people in India 
and thirty million Chinese, who are Moham- 
medans. Buddhism has been practically 
driven out of India by Hinduism, but it dom- 
inates Burmah, Siam and Tibet, and is the 
controlling faith in China and Japan. In 
China it is mixed with Taoism and Con- 
fucianism, and in Japan with Shintoism, but 
these nature faiths and ethical codes do not 
materially interfere with Buddhistic concep- 
tions and ways of worship. Buddhism does 
not attempt to solve the problem of the origin 
of the universe. It has to do with the material 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 43 

world and existences as they are. It holds the 
utter vanity of all earthly good. Life is an 
evil. With decay and death there is the in- 
evitable law of rebirth. Buddhism does not 
aspire to immortality of the soul, or even to 
the rebirth of the individual. The seed of ex- 
istence, called "Karma," must be destroyed if 
another life is to be stopped. "Karma" can 
be destroyed only by eight things, "Right 
views, right thoughts, right speech, right ac- 
tions, right living, right exertion, right recol- 
lection and right meditation." There is noth- 
ing eternal but the law of change, cause and 
effect. Everything is passing; nothing is; 
everything becomes. This organized life con- 
tains in itself no eternal germ; it passes away 
like everything else, and there remains only 
the accumulated results of itself and its ac- 
tions. Each individual in the chain inherits all 
of good or evil that all its predecessors have 
done, or been, and takes up the struggle 
toward enlightenment where they left it. The 
Buddhist lives and works, not for himself, but, 
by his virtue, to decrease the sum of misery of 
sentient beings. 

The Nirvana sought is simply extinction, yet 
it is described as the happy seat, the excellent 
eternal place of bliss where there is no more 



44 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

death nor decay, the home of peace, the other 
side of the ocean of existence, the harbor of 
refuge. Life must be got rid of, because that 
which causes life caused also decay and death ; 
and these counteract what good life may give. 
Salvation consists, therefore, in getting rid of 
all, but it can be had only through a radical 
change in man's nature brought about by his 
own self-denial and self-control. Mental cul- 
ture and not mental death becomes a neces- 
sity. Men differ from each other, not by the 
chances of birth, but by their own attainments 
and character. Very naturally, rapid prog- 
ress in spiritual life was considered possible 
only with the ascetic life. With asceticism 
came a mass of legends about the founder's 
life. Fearful superstitions, devil-worship, 
witchcraft, astrology and what-not have grown 
up with Buddhism, and by Buddhism they 
will be continued and supported. Since life 
was to be escaped and immortality was not pos- 
sible, self-destruction has had no terror, ex- 
cept that it lay the burden of such misdoing 
upon those that came after. The Japanese 
general who committed suicide as a testimony 
of love and loyalty to his dying emperor es- 
caped a worthless thing, life, and contributed 
great virtue in such a deed to the accumulated 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 45 

merit of the people. The soldiers who fell in 
battle lost nothing personally, but by their 
service they built merit for their race. Such 
is the Buddhist mind of the Orient. Pessimism 
could scarcely be more pronounced or more 
thoroughly wrought into the life of the people. 
Hinduism preceded Buddhism and was the 
basis of Gautama's thinking. Brahmanism is 
a religion of abstraction. It holds to the con- 
ception of an absolute, all embracing spirit, 
unconditioned. It is the original cause and is 
the ultimate goal of all individual souls. Brah- 
manism assumed the ceaseless working of the 
absolute spirit as a creative, conservative and 
destructive principle under three divine per- 
sonalities. This assumption gave rise to poly- 
theism of the most pronounced kind. No peo- 
ple ever had so many gods of such varying 
kinds and powers. The third doctrine was 
that of the transmigration of soul, the reincar- 
nations of human spirits. The possibilities in 
rebirth, reincarnation, range from the meanest 
beast to the highest spiritual being. With 
such possibilities it became very necessary that 
the purity of descent and the purity of re- 
ligious belief and ceremonial usage be care- 
fully preserved. This gave rise to the caste 
system. Indo- Aryans not only kept the native 



46 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

races apart from social intercourse with them- 
selves, but shut them out from participation in 
their own high aims, religious convictions and 
ceremonial practices. Instead of attempting 
to raise the standards of spiritual life, or even 
allowing gradual intercourse to bring about 
a community of intellectual culture and re- 
ligious sentiment, they set up artificial bar- 
riers in order to prevent their own traditional 
forms of devotion from being contaminated 
by the obnoxious practices of the servile race. 
The serf was not allowed to worship the gods 
of the Aryan freeman. To-day India is a 
seething mass of pantheism, polytheism, oc- 
cultism, demonism, animalism and horrible 
superstition. Nirvana is the highest goal in the 
conceptions of the best and the greatest, and 
it is hid in haze. Darkness rests heavily upon 
the millions in this country of impersonal re- 
ligion. Without the clarifying consciousness 
of transcendent personality India will never 
see the sun in her religious heavens. 

Mohammedanism is the religion of two hun- 
dred sixty millions of people. Of these more 
than sixty millions are in India and thirty mil- 
lions in China. The near East, covering the 
former Turkish Empire, Persia, Arabia, 
Egypt and the North African countries, are 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 47 

under its domination. This faith was formu- 
lated in the seventh century of the Christian 
era. Its founder was an Arab, who was 
possessed of the old traditional religious 
conceptions of his people. He was thor- 
oughly conversant with ancient Judaism, 
but knew nothing of Jesus Christ, more 
than the name which his disciples made far 
inferior to that of Mohammed. Mohammed- 
anism has always proclaimed an unyielding 
monotheism. It has fought all forms of 
idolatry. It has nurtured faith in a sov- 
ereign God. But it has been the victim of 
the most inflexible fatalism. Man is a mere 
puppet in the hands of the Supreme Being 
of the universe and is not responsible for the 
movements of the world. When the Sultan 
of Turkey was dethroned in 1908, he had but 
one comment to make: "It is the will of God." 
Whatever takes places is at "the will of God." 
This sturdy faith in an invincible Sovereign 
puts iron into the nerve and dauntless deter- 
mination into the spirit, but it fosters uncon- 
cern for the higher personal qualities and in- 
difference to the progress of civilization. The 
exaltation of Deity is noble, but the deprecia- 
tion of human personality with its obligations 
is disastrous. There is no demand by Chris- 



48 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tianity that the Sovereign God be dethroned, 
but that man must be made to realize his son- 
ship to the most High and his responsibility 
as a co-laborer with the Almighty in establish- 
ment of the divine kingdom in the earth. 



The oriental world can never be brought into 
a new and competent religious faith without 
a new and adequate philosophy of personalism. 
The religious spirit is there and the mystical 
interest in and insight into spiritual value are 
highly developed, but there is wanting an or- 
ganizing spirit to head up, systematize, ener- 
gize and direct thought and effort. The re- 
ligious system is without a center or an end. 
The conception of a world of persons with a 
Supreme Person at the head is foreign to the 
oriental mind. Pantheism has been inevitable 
in the midst of massive forces of nature almost 
entirely not understood when there was no 
conception of a Supreme personality as the 
controlling power. Nature might be diffused 
with intelligence, or some pervading mind 
might be recognized in the movements and ac- 
tivities of the material world, or some super- 
lative power be in command, but that would 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 49 

not be enough. The intelligent worshiper must 
have personality as the object of adoration. 
Though he bow before stocks and stones, the 
object of his worship is not the image but the 
personality represented by the image. If he 
does not find such a person in the Master 
of Creation, he will attempt to posit personali- 
ties in nature, of varying value, to whom he 
will give worship. This is what has happened 
and is happening in the non-Christian world. 
Polytheism has followed pantheism. Without 
a Supreme God-Personality a multiplicity of 
god-personalities has been inevitable. There is 
but one cure for polytheism and that is the 
establishment of a Supreme Person in the Uni- 
verse. Pantheism can exist only with the sub- 
merging or extinction of personality, and 
wherever it is dominant personality ceases to 
be assertive. On the other hand, with the rise 
of personality the mists of pantheism are 
driven away. 

Borden P. Bowne in his "Personalism" said: 
"The essential meaning of personality is self- 
hood, self-consciousness, self-control and the 
power to know." The fact of personality is 
not that of the finite or infinite, but simply 
of knowledge, the consciousness of self, the 
ability to determine self action, and to control 



50 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the self in its choices and operations. Com- 
plete and perfect selfhood, self-consciousness 
and self-determination would mean a complete 
and perfect personality. This could not be 
expected in the finite, but only in the infinite 
Being. The Supreme Person is without the 
limitations and accidents of the human per- 
sonality, but the Supreme Person and the 
human differ not in kind but in degree of self- 
hood. That is the interpretation of the Scrip- 
tural statement, "So God created man in his 
own image." The distinctive thing about man 
is not his form or features, his corporeal sub- 
stance and physical endowments, but the self- 
hood with its self-consciousness and self-deter- 
mination and power to know which distinguish 
the Supreme Creator himself. God is not an- 
thropomorphic. Man in his essential personal- 
ity is no more tangible, picturable, visible than 
is God, for the elements of personality are 
without bodily or carnal significance. But the 
human limitations to personality may be re- 
duced, and personality may be enlarged, mag- 
nified and rendered more comprehensive. The 
self in humanity is amenable to the laws of 
growth. Self -consciousness and self-determi- 
nation become more accurate and more power- 
ful as selfhood becomes more capacious and 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 51 

more forceful. Whatever makes for the de- 
velopment of selfhood advances personality 
and renders it confidently assertive in deter- 
mining the issues of life. Without this asser- 
tiveness humanity gropes and grovels in dark- 
ness and degradation; but with it the human 
rises to the realm of achievement, dominion 
and supreme worth. 

Personality is the dominant principle of 
humanity. It comes to enlarged strength and 
effectiveness through the increase of psychical 
energies. Whatever will quicken the psychical 
element, broaden its sweep and perfect its 
vision, will add to the force of this dominant 
principle. Since the directive control in the 
world is in the personal will there is necessity 
that this be impelled by high purpose and 
righteous motives. Personal dynamics are 
pushing forward the processes in world devel- 
opment. Religion that fails to capture this 
citadel of human interests, this source of life 
currents, this center of world control becomes 
a thing apart and void. That it has not done 
so in the vast areas of human thinking the non- 
Christian world bears to-day unmistakable tes- 
timony. Monstrous human failure is charge- 
able to the lack of religion to possess the courts 
of human consciousness and assume the throne 



52 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

of human will. Religion has been too content 
with the ante-chamber of human life and too 
unmindful of what awaits within. The door 
will not be opened until personality comes to 
the place of first importance. Religion will be 
weak, beggarly and helpless until it ascends 
the throne of human power. The history of 
the centuries will be one monotonous routine 
until the creative energy of constructive per- 
sonality is introduced into the movements of 
the race. The currents must be turned into 
another and larger channel before the world 
moves into a nobler and greater sphere. Per- 
sonality holds the keys that unlock the pent-up 
resources of God and man and the possibilities 
of the new creation for the new earth. Re- 
ligion has as its first responsibility the setting 
of personality to the sublime task of bringing 
to hand the Kingdom of God in the earth. 

The development of personality has always 
been the supreme objective of Christianity. 
Man is the greatest factor in man's world. 
The defect in his existence is not in the Creator 
or the supernatural powers that control but 
in man himself. Sin lies at his door and is 
not chargeable to any higher power. Life 
is not bad; it is man, that lives it, who is bad. 
With man good, life will be good. The cure 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 53 

of life's ills is not extinction but exaltation. 
That exaltation is not only possible but certain 
with personality brought to its legitimate and 
preordained status and given that range of 
righteous control for which it has been freely 
endowed. That which persists is not some 
blind life force but intelligent, purposeful per- 
sonality. The primary task of religion is so 
to purify and fortify personality as to pre- 
pare it for collaboration with the Supreme per- 
sonality in the consummation of his eternal 
purpose. Character becomes at once in such 
a system the chief attainment in human life. 
Christianity has made personal righteousness 
indispensable to citizenship and service in and 
through the kingdom that Jesus declared he 
came to establish. "Repent" was the opening 
injunction and condition. Repentance was the 
initial act and constant attitude in the Chris- 
tian regime. Kings and princes were no more 
than fishermen and artisans before the gospel 
of repentance and personal righteousness. 
The worth of the individual lay not in the 
circumstances and conditions of life but in the 
personality which Christianity undertook to 
quicken, energize and direct. The entire sys- 
tem of Christian doctrine, salvation and service 
is built about personality. With this center 



54 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

it has endeavored to set the heavens in order 
and make luminous and intelligent the move- 
ments of the earth. 

Christianity is the religion of a Person. No 
other religion can or does make any such claim. 
Taoism was founded by Laotze but not upon 
him. Brahmanism is a philosophy rather than 
a religion, and came from a body of great 
teachers. Confucius made no claim to the es- 
tablishment of more than a code of morals. 
Gautama gave the world Buddhism but the 
very core of it is the extinction of personality. 
He was no more than its highest exponent. 
Mohammedanism proclaims its founder as the 
great prophet, but not as its foundation. 
Christianity makes Jesus Christ its chief corner 
stone. It rests its claims upon Christ, the ideal 
created and set forth by Jesus of Nazareth. 
He was a great teacher; but he is the great 
Savior. He delivered marvelous doctrines; 
but he wrought in and through himself won- 
drous salvation. Man is taught that salvation 
is not by faith that believes the things reported 
of Jesus but by faith in Jesus Christ, the Son 
of God. Not because of what he said or did 
but because of what he was and is man has 
his eternal hope. "Christ in you the hope of 
glory" was Paul's statement of the issue. 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 55 

Christ is the center of the heavenly system and 
attracts to himself everything that pertains to 
man's world. Jesus made this claim for him- 
self as the Christ of God and the Christian 
believers have wrought out life upon that basis. 
Those who have attempted to make of Jesus 
Christ simply a myth have had small hearing, 
because they assail the very foundation of the 
Christian stronghold. It is the person of 
Christ that appeals to men of like passions. 
Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God that 
he revealed, and the revelation of man that 
required salvation. In him man and God 
found their union and unity. 

The fundamental doctrines of Christianity 
relate to personality. They open with the in- 
carnation of the Son of God. The very con- 
tent of the concept of "Son" is personality. 
It connotes nothing else. The Son of God 
became and was the son of man and thus iden- 
tified himself with humanity. The resurrection 
was accomplished in demonstration of the 
power inherent in the divine personality over 
the forces that prevail in the material world. 
The atonement was achieved by the Divine 
person for the human person. The Holy 
Spirit was sent not as some diffusive influence 
but as divine personality representative of the 



56 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

triune Godhead. There is no teaching about 
Christ that is not fundamentally personal. 
Christianity's relation to man is just as per- 
sonal. His first need is regeneration. There 
is no trouble about his body. It is equal to 
what it was planned to carry. Man's cause 
of distress is in his spirit. Salvation, if 
wrought at all, must be achieved in this very 
center of personality. Repentance and faith 
are personal. The witness of the Spirit is the 
witness of personalities. The entire plan of 
salvation is personal in means, methods, agen- 
cies and ends. The final hope of immortality 
is not in carnal things but in the deep, true 
elements of the spirit life. Heaven is to be 
home with the blissful relations which re- 
deemed and glorified personalities will be com- 
petent and glad to establish. The rewards set 
before the Christian man as the fruits of spirit 
life are personal virtues, such as joy, peace and 
love. Material and carnal things have their 
significance to the Christian only in the spirit- 
ual values into which they are being changed. 
Jesus said: "What shall it profit a man if he 
gains the whole world and forfeits his own 
soul." The seat of man is the soul, the spirit, 
the personality, and Christianity offers salva- 
tion for that as the chief end of all religion. 






INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 57 

The creative principle in Christianity finds 
its true field in human personality. In all 
creation personality is always recognized as 
the creative force. Gross materialism may be 
satisfied with a bold impersonalism in the world 
of nature, but in the final analysis the posited 
cause is personal. "God said" and creation 
was in process. Such was the conception of 
the early Scriptural writers. They may have 
clothed God with a crude anthropomorphism 
but what they were endeavoring to do was to 
represent the creative power as personal. It 
is always so. Wherever there is personality 
there is and will be creation. Christianity has 
been unquestionably the greatest creative force 
in the world in the last nineteen centuries. It 
is such to-day. The reason is that Christianity 
has operated in and upon personality which 
is possessed of creative energy. The non- 
Christian religions have been dead and dull so 
far as stimulating social assertiveness is con- 
cerned, and the reason is not far to seek. They 
have neglected the seat of the creative energy, 
and wandered in the haze of mystifying pan- 
theism. Not until they turn the searchlights 
upon man and discover him will they be pre- 
pared to find a worthy God for him. They 
have religious values in their keeping but they 



58 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

lack the organizing force which Christianity 
so gloriously bestows. By the standard of 
purified, fortified, purposeful personality as 
a product all religions must be tested and esti- 
mated. The non-Christian world awaits to- 
day the establishment of this goal for its new 
religious life. 

Christianity has a call from the world to- 
day to be not a conqueror but an interpreter 
of its faiths. It must have no ruthless hand 
to lay upon the sacred beliefs of men, however 
feeble and inadequate they may be. Religion 
binds man to the most sacred things that he 
knows, or aspires to possess, and is too pre- 
cious to be allowed to suffer at the hands of 
a greater faith. The late Dr. Charles Cuth- 
bert Hall, in addressing an audience in India 
on Christianity as the fulfilling religion, said: 
"The truth that is in your several faiths cannot 
be shaken by your assimilation of the faith of 
Christ. Truth never casts out truth; it casts 
out only error and whatsoever else has served 
its purpose fully and is ready to depart." 
Every lesser truth which the gospel touches 
is not destroyed thereby but transfigured and 
given new life and power. Christianity's mis- 
sion is to show the better way, to reveal the 
greater truth, and to demonstrate the more 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 59 

glorious life. It has done the work of an 
interpreter since the beginning. The records 
of Judaism are full of ugliness in deceits, cruel- 
ties, polygamies and else, and yet the Old Tes- 
tament is a great heritage of Christianity. 
The sacrifices and ceremonies with their dull- 
ness and even abhorrence found their first real 
meaning through the Christian interpretation. 
Christianity furnished the key to the divine 
truth and life underneath it all, and man with 
this key has been able to make sacred these 
Scriptures. Just so Christianity is to in- 
terpret to the oriental mind its own religious 
holdings. Bishop Charles H. Brent, long time 
resident in the Philippine Islands, once said: 
"Touched by Christianity the ideals and re- 
ligions of the Orient are a contribution to the 
Kingdom of God ; unconverted and unfulfilled 
they are a menace to the very life of Christian- 
ity." Christianity has as its duty the inter- 
pretation of religion that it may become a crea- 
tive force in human redemption and exaltation. 
Religion requires not only such an interpre- 
tation as will make clear and unmistakable its 
meaning and purpose, but also as will demon- 
strate its power to achieve for the worshiper 
the supreme ends of his existence. Auguste 
Sabatier says: "The question man puts to him- 



60 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

self in religion is always a question of salva- 
tion, and if he sometimes seems to be pursuing 
in it the enigma of the universe, it is only that 
he may solve the enigma of life." Wherein 
lies the power of religion to effect the salva- 
tion of man? The non-Christian religions offer 
to secure the intervention and service of su- 
perior beings by bringing to bear the influences 
which man in various ways may discover and 
utilize. Christianity teaches that salvation ad- 
equate and complete is not effected so much 
for man as in him. The bought-up man, the 
bought-off devil, and the bought-in God are 
not genuinely Christian conceptions, however 
much they have figured in theological discus- 
sions. Religious power is personal power for 
divine ends, and it is transmitted by divine 
personality to the human. The community of 
relations between the divine and human per- 
sonalities is the medium for conveying currents 
of power from the eternal sources to the human 
ends. Salvation is in the completeness of this 
bond. That this bond between the human and 
divine personalities can be established and 
maintained Christianity boldly affirms. For 
that purpose Christ became in man Life. The 
supreme ends of man's existence became at- 
tainable through this divine power which Chris- 



INTERPRETING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 61 

tianity reveals. Herein is the sublime inter- 
pretation of religion which Christianity offers 
all humanity. For its propagation the great 
missionary movement of modern Evangelical 
Christian Churches has been planned and is 
now being superbly carried forward. 



LECTURE II: RECONSTRUCTING 
MAN'S THINKING 



The interpretation of religion by Christian- 
ity, the great aim in missionary effort, is by 
no means a simple process. Religion not only 
involves great and multiplied interests of the 
people, but it is based upon intellectual con- 
ceptions as well as emotional aspirations. The 
old psychology that taught its theory of facul- 
ties, or more or less separate compartments of 
mental activities, has been discarded, and to- 
day the intellect, sensibilities and will are re- 
garded as simply aspects or forms of expres- 
sion of the entire personal life. 

The intellect does not act independently of 
the sensibilities and will, and neither of these 
acts independently of the intellect or of the 
other. The entire personal being is definitely 
and intimately related to every act and atti- 
tude. Unless this fact is duly recognized, 
efforts at religious transformation may be seri- 
ously misdirected and the results be not only 
futile but disastrous. It is to-day well es- 

62 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 63 

tablished that the moral and religious can have 
no sphere of real value where the intellect is 
not the guiding force. Low intellectuality will 
be almost invariably accompanied by low 
morals and incompetent religious beliefs and 
ignoble acts. High intellectuality will cast off 
all religious conceptions and expressions which 
do not harmonize with itself. Religion is the 
expression of the entire being as it is, in its 
relation to the Supreme Being in the human's 
universe. Any effort to transform religious 
beliefs, acts of worship, or activities in re- 
ligious service cannot be expected to accom- 
plish the desired end without a radical altera- 
tion of the mental holdings, processes and atti- 
tudes of the person or people involved. 

Because of this fact, if for no other reason, 
the mental life of the people is of primary 
importance and concern to religion. There 
can be no hope of making truly religious a 
colony of mental defectives, however beauti- 
fully emotional they may be. Reason is as 
essential to religion as to all else that lifts 
man toward the ideal set forth in the purpose 
of creation. Not only what a man believes, 
but what he with his existing mental endow- 
ments and bias is capable of believing, must 
be taken into consideration when a transforma- 



64* MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tion of his views is under contemplation. Re- 
ligion is the result of thinking as well as of 
revelation. In fact, revelation would not be 
possible without the mind of man capable of 
"thinking God's thoughts after Him" and 
transmitting them to the race. Laotze, Con- 
fucius, Buddha, and the great company of 
Hindu philosophers who built up Brahmanism, 
were thinkers, and their matured thoughts have 
become the foundations of beliefs of far-reach- 
ing consequence. But thinking in specific 
lines, or channels, or grooves, not only results 
in certain attained thoughts but it sets the mold 
of the mind, if it does not in great measure 
give character to the mental fiber. The scien- 
tist is frequently forced to confess his loss of 
capacity for metaphysics or classical litera- 
ture. A mathematician, after reading Milton's 
"Paradise Lost," is reported to have said that 
it was a very interesting book but that it did 
not prove anything. The mathematical mind 
is the product of mathematical thinking. The 
same is true of the scientific, philosophical, the- 
ological and religious mind. The mind of a 
people must be converted if there is to be any 
transformation in its beliefs. 

The Christian propaganda must necessarily 
begin with the status of the mind of the peo- 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 65 

pie, its characteristics and its contents. What 
is its philosophy of life and what have been 
the processes by which this philosophy has been 
produced are necessary questions, prior to any 
intelligent missionary effort. There is a phi- 
losophy, a system of metaphysics, with its con- 
cepts of knowledge and being, at the center 
of every civilization. These conceptions are 
the real determinative elements in the life of 
a people, and the life cannot be greatly 
changed except as these determinative ele- 
ments are affected. There are those who speak 
slightingly of metaphysics, especially if they 
are possessed of certain scientific pretensions, 
but even they have their metaphysics, however 
poor or however untenable. There must be 
foundations before any structures can be 
erected. Human beings are so constituted that 
they must have a philosophy of the essence 
of things, the basic energies, the eternal cause, 
and the forces that play upon the world. That 
philosophy will develop a great First Cause, 
the relation of the world to it, and conceptions 
of how man can be harmonized with it. It is 
here that religion rises with compulsion. Re- 
ligious conceptions have a philosophical basis 
without which they fail, and that utterly, un- 
less a new one can be supplied. No great abid- 



66 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ing religious faith can be maintained upon an 
unreasonable, uncertain and unavailing philo- 
sophical foundation, whether that faith be 
Christian or non-Christian. On the other 
hand, so long as the philosophical ground holds 
secure and unaffected, the religious faith will 
be kept steady, sufficient and unmovable. 

The reconstruction of the human mind is the 
most difficult labor to which man has ever set 
himself. The mature mind is exceedingly 
tenacious in its holdings. It is well that it is 
so. By this characteristic comes that stability 
and reliability which are so essential to prog- 
ress. So difficult is the work of reconstruction 
that those who would produce a new mind have 
sought and chosen the way of construction in- 
stead, whenever it has opened. With every 
people there is a large body of individuals of 
low mental equipment in whom the determina- 
tive conceptions of their civilization are dim, 
poorly understood and lightly held. Christian 
propagandists have generally chosen to take 
these individuals and build in them a new life 
and then await the creation by natural proc- 
esses of new minds that should become capable 
of thinking the new conceptions. The scien- 
tific laws of growth have been relied upon to 
bring about in due course the new creation. 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 67 

The son of the low caste Indian sweeper has 
in this way come to be the teacher of the high 
caste, self-righteous Brahman, and the children 
of the coolie to be the instructors of the aris- 
tocratic Mandarins. By this construction of 
the new mind in the neglected man, there has 
been erected the scaffolding for the reconstruc- 
tion of the old mind in the dominant elements 
of the non-Christian peoples. While the proc- 
ess is slow, if faithfully continued, the outcome 
will be certain. These neglected elements con- 
stitute such enormous masses that the oppor- 
tunity for constructive work in them is all but 
unlimited, and thereby the way may be fully 
opened to the reconstruction of the thought 
of the non- Christian world. Such an oppor- 
tunity brings with it the imperative responsi- 
bility for the greater thought-life of man- 
kind. 

But wisdom indicates that before any ade- 
quate constructive work can be accomplished 
for the creation of a new mind, there should 
be first determined the mental holdings, the 
mental habit and the mental fiber of the people 
whose mental reconstruction is sought. The 
task to be done, the objective to be achieved, 
the end to be attained, should be carefully sur- 
veyed and fully set forth in bold outline before 



68 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the process for its complete accomplishment is 
entered upon. The process itself can be little 
less than haphazard if full knowledge is want- 
ing and the end in view not definitely deter- 
mined. There has been much vain missionary- 
effort because of the lack of this very knowl- 
edge. The gospel has often been proclaimed 
with the expectation that in some way it would 
do its work irrespective of the condition of the 
ground upon which it came. The parable of 
the sower with the same seed on the barren 
road, the choked thicket and the prepared land 
has been lost to such spirit agriculturists. The 
sower must learn that his duty to sow is no 
greater than to break up the hard-packed earth 
and clear away the thicket and make ready the 
receiving soil. Christianity can become domi- 
nant in the world because it is creative, deals 
directly with personality, and affords the true 
revelation of God and his fatherly relations to 
the race, but it must have an intellect that can 
and will think its thought, sensibilities that re- 
spond to its exalting appeals, and a will that 
executes unhesitatingly and joyfully its en- 
larging behests. The world to be Christian 
must have a Christian mind, Christian emo- 
tions and Christian will. 

Religion affects and is affected by all truth 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 69 

and it can never come to a stable basis with- 
out a consistent philosophy of all life. The 
peoples of the non- Christian world are far 
from the peoples of the Christian faith in the 
fundamental conceptions of the primary forces 
of the universe. God, man and the world are 
the three great powers about which men differ 
radically. There can be no unity of the human 
race until there is more or less harmony in the 
conceptions of these fundamental forces. Re- 
ligion is the life-effort of man to come into 
proper relations with God, the world in which 
he lives, and his fellow-beings. So long as 
he lacks an adequate and satisfying compre- 
hension of any one of these, he is incapacitated 
for developing trustworthy religious ideas or 
entering upon a dependable religious experi- 
ence. While perfect religious conceptions will 
never be possible to humanity because of the 
limitations that belong to finite beings, yet the 
approach to the perfect religion is being made 
in proportion to the conformity of the views 
held of God, man and the world to the highest 
obtained and obtainable facts. Progress to- 
ward the establishment of the most nearly per- 
fect religion in man can be secured only as 
these conceptions are clarified, systematized 
and lifted to the highest possible level which 



TO MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

knowledge and revelation can produce. It is 
here that Christianity has been able to establish 
its claims of superiority among religions. Its 
notions of God, its philosophy of the world, and 
its knowledge of man have erected standards 
of value and means for their attainment which 
are satisfactory to the best human intelligence 
and sufficient for the highest destiny of the 
race. Christianity has set itself to the recon- 
struction of human thought and the recon- 
struction of the human mind in order to the 
establishment in the earth of its conceptions of 
God, man and the universe. This is requisite 
to making the world Christian. 



ii 

The first thing in the process of reconstruct- 
ing the world's thinking is to determine what 
the mental life of the world is, the trend of 
its activities, the manner of its expression, and 
what has brought the human mind to its pres- 
ent state, attitude and fiber. Reconstruction 
is by no means to be classified with abrupt rev- 
olution. It must be attained through a normal 
development by rational processes under the 
pressure of an intelligent, purposeful plan. 
Such a process must not be hurried, but it 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 71 

must be constant. The task seems all but lim- 
itless, and most difficult of accomplishment. 
That half the people of the world cannot read 
or write any language is well known ; but that 
does not mean that their minds are bare or 
necessarily wanting in strength or capability. 
It means that their mental furnishings or hold- 
ings are largely a heritage with which they 
will part very reluctantly and which they will 
modify very slowly, unless they come into the 
modern methods of cultivated peoples for ac- 
quiring knowledge. Their mental fiber has 
taken its texture from the thought-stuff with 
which they have been occupied. The fiber can 
be changed by changing the mental food. But 
there must be created the taste, the appetite 
for the new food before the process for making 
a new mind can effectively begin. The ques- 
tion arises, What is the thought domain, and 
what can be done, what will be done, what is 
being done to make over the minds of eight 
hundred million persons in the world who are 
unlettered and bound, severely bound, to the 
traditions of their ancestors and the thought- 
heritage of their tribes? If the world is to be 
made Christian, this question must have an an- 
swer before the comprehensive movement can 
be projected. 



72 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

There is another question that should have 
diligent consideration early in this movement. 
What are the thoughts or systems and methods 
of knowledge which are now most pervasive 
in society and most influential in their effects 
upon the present and the future of the race? 
Streams of thought are flowing in newly made 
channels from one part of the world to the 
other. There are gulf streams from the South 
and the far East, and there are great tides 
from the North and the West. What are these 
great intellectual currents carrying to newly 
opened bays and canals and distributing out 
over the systems for human refreshing? "Oh, 
the East is East, and the West is West." Not 
entirely so in this new era and it will be less 
so in the near to-morrow. Europe and East- 
ern Asia are neighbors now. More than that, 
what Europe is thinking Eastern Asia learns 
with its breakfast. The great universities are 
not national any more, but world-wide institu- 
tions. The old missionary was the exponent 
of an unknown world. Not so the new mis- 
sionary. Knowledge has its own systems of 
transportation and communications to make 
the world wise. What has Christianity to do 
with these systems in order to secure the con- 
summation of its divine end? The world's 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 73 

mind is being transformed and human thought 
reconstructed. Is Christianity in charge of the 
transformation and directing of the work of 
reconstruction? 

To answer these questions will lead to an 
inquiry, first, into the attitude of the human 
mind to be changed toward the world in which 
it has being and relation, and then into the 
pervasive influence and the prevailing charac- 
teristics of the intellectual forces that are 
making for the enlargement of the world's 
knowledge and the recasting of the world's 
mind. The field of Christianity is the world, 
all the world, however old, however new, how- 
ever cultured, however illiterate, however 
strong, however weak. Europe and Asia, 
America and Africa are alike fields in this 
day for the planting of the real Christianity 
of the Christ. The Christian mind, with the 
Christian fiber, the Christian holdings and the 
Christian heart, is the object in the new project 
for world-Christianization. There is a univer- 
sally recognized need of new ideals, new evo- 
lution of man, new consciousness of God, since 
the shameful suicidal carnage of the last dec- 
ade. The heavens are still leaden with the 
awful clouds which the explosions of old ideas 
have produced. The hymn of hate has 



74 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

wrought human nerves into frenzy, and the 
thought of man has descended to the level of 
his carnality. Who will now think for the 
race, the race that is human, the race of the 
sons of God? There is no place where the 
raucous voice of war-thunder was not heard. 
The world has been aroused. It cannot return 
to its old couch of slumber. It has made up 
its mind that it must get up and go forth to 
the day that is dawning. It is open to a new 
morning message, fresh as the dew and joyous 
as the sunlight. It can be brought to think 
new thoughts and clothe itself in new habili- 
ments of mental life. Who will be the mes- 
senger and what will he say? 

It must be kept in mind that the non-reading 
world of eight hundred millions has little 
knowledge beyond the provincial and the in- 
herited beliefs and traditions. To get at their 
mental state it is important to know how they 
came to what they now possess, or what now 
possesses them. That the dull dumb forces 
of the material world have been their teachers 
must be recognized, and the influence of that 
impact can scarcely be overestimated. Many 
philosophers have declared that religion origi- 
nated in the ominous silence of the forces of 
nature and the fear which they have induced. 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 75 

An old Latin poet wrote: "It is fear that en- 
genders the gods." It is easy to believe that 
a state of misery and distress filled the heart 
with infinite terror as man looked upon the 
disordered and destructive forces of primitive 
nature and witnessed the phenomena of this 
mysterious incomprehensible world. While 
fear cannot account for religion, yet religion 
rises with the mystery of the unknown. From 
early periods to the latest day the voices of 
nature have awakened the spirit of worship. 
David exclaimed: "The heavens declare the 
glory of God and the firmament showeth his 
handiwork." There is a vast gulf between the 
spirit of David and that of Herbert Spencer, 
who found himself face to face with what he 
termed the unknowable, and vaster still be- 
tween that of either and the spirit of the rude, 
untutored man of the heathen world. Nature 
strikes terror, or awakens adoration, accord- 
ing to the knowledge which interprets its mes- 
sage to man. Religion in no small way is af- 
fected, if not swayed, by the philosophy of the 
material world. 

Tribes in their primitive state, whether of 
to-day or the historic past, exhibit a religion 
of varying degrees of animism. Spirits to 
them give life to nature and are causes to be 



76 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

reckoned with in the affairs of men. Their 
conceptions are exceedingly crude but they are 
dominant influences in their lives. Gods and 
demons, spirits of good and of evil, hold sway 
over them and can be appeased only by some 
act or offering. This state of mind to an amaz- 
ing extent exists in the present day. The black 
peoples of Africa, the Indian tribes of the 
Americas, and the mountain groups of central 
Asia are under the depressing thralldom of 
this animistic faith. China and Japan, with 
their almost five hundred millions, are enslaved 
to these destructive conceptions, while the vast 
majority of the three hundred millions in In- 
dia stagger under the same burdening views. 
China's belief in a dragon that inhabited the 
earth has prevented the construction of a rail- 
road system, the most imperative economic 
need of the nation. The ground could not be 
cut for fear the dragon's back would be struck ; 
and if so he would bring on an earthquake, 
a famine or a pestilence to show his anger. 
The dead could not be put into the ground 
because of the dragon, and because the mounds 
made over the coffins, placed wherever the liv- 
ing desired, were the habitations of the de- 
parted spirits. Belief in demonology domi- 
nates China. The pagoda with its five, seven 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 77 

or nine stories is a monument to the belief in 
spirits. The pagoda protects the town, as the 
spirits on leaving its top, higher than any build- 
ing, must go in a straight line, and thereby 
pass over the city. The house that has a door- 
way that fronts an open lot has before the door 
a brick wall ten feet wide and as high as the 
eaves of the house, in order that the spirits 
coming from the vacant lot may strike the 
wall and be turned down the street and thereby 
be prevented from entering the house. The 
cure for such superstition is intellectual en- 
lightenment already too long delayed. 

The temples and shrines in all parts of China 
and Japan bear unmistakable testimony to the 
false views of nature and its hidden forces. 
Taoism and Shintoism, the ethnic faiths of 
China and Japan, are almost entirely nature 
cults and could not endure the light of present- 
day science. The Parsees of India, a most 
interesting and prosperous people, are Zoroas- 
trians. They expose the bodies of the dead 
to be eaten by vultures because they consider 
the earth too sacred to permit a burial, and 
the fire too holy to be used in cremation. This 
same faith is held as the ancient belief of 
Persia. The Jains of India number 1,500,000. 
They believe that even inorganic matter may 



78 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

have a soul. They will not kill anything, not 
even insects. They maintain hospitals for cats, 
dogs, decrepit horses, diseased cows and other 
animals, even for such insects as can be pro- 
vided for. They build in the cities small stone 
houses, richly carved, for the birds that may 
seek them. In the eradication of birds or ani- 
mals that may carry any dangerous disease, 
such as the bubonic plague, they are great ob- 
structionists. Yet they are wealthy, intelli- 
gent, progressive, and lead in industrial and 
economic development. A false or inadequate 
view of the material world and the forces of 
nature has led to these peculiar and unwar- 
rantable notions. The people are devout. No 
more impressive sight ever comes to a Chris- 
tian traveler than that of a vast company of 
Parsees sitting in reverence and beautiful 
worship of the golden sun at its setting in 
Malabar Bay in Bombay. Nikko the Magnifi- 
cent in Japan is a fit dwelling place for the 
gods the Japanese reckon to be there, if beauty 
and grandeur can make it so. The mountains 
in their mass, the rivers in their mighty flow, 
the shady nooks and the silent valleys, the 
majestic sun and the mighty spheres have 
pressed upon great souls the consciousness of 
a power not themselves making for the deter- 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 79 

mination of the highest destiny of the human 
race, and they have poured out before them 
sincere adoration. 

The multitudinous peoples and individuals 
who worship nature, or through nature, do not 
know nature. They worship not because of 
what they know but because of what they find 
mysterious, incomprehensible and awe-produc- 
ing. It is amazing how large a proportion of 
the earth's inhabitants, even among the ad- 
herents of Christianity, base their worship on 
the mysterious. Occultism has a peculiar 
charm and makes a marvelous appeal to those 
who identify the supernatural with the incom- 
prehensible. Christianity's sublime task is to 
make the supernatural intelligible and to flood 
with light the occult things of the human 
world. Darkness is no proper medium of 
spiritual virtues. Blindness is not predicable 
of the forces of nature simply because man 
does not see the processes by which they op- 
erate. The unknown is not necessarily the 
unknowable. The unknowable has been dem- 
onstrated to the most intellectual of the race 
to be not the realm of gods but the lamentable 
state of human incompetents. The task yet 
remains to illuminate fully this region of the 
unknown, clear it of the possibilities of har- 



80 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

boring gods, and relate it to the intelligible 
world. Such an achievement will be fraught 
with perils, as well as productive of benedic- 
tions, to that portion of the race which has 
based religion upon this unknown in nature. 
Illumination that destroys error must reveal 
truth of finer force for humanity if it is to 
be held to an adequate purpose. This respon- 
sibility rests with those who set themselves 
to the construction of the new thought-life. 



in 

The human race can never be fully Chris- 
tian with an unreasonable and unfounded view 
of the material universe. Religious concep- 
tions based upon a view of nature and its 
forces which science will make, and has made, 
utterly untenable, will fall into confusion and 
pass into discard as people see the falsity of 
their foundations. Conceptions based upon 
ignorance can be supported and maintained 
only by ignorance. The progress of science 
has been the undoing of a vast amount of re- 
ligious thinking among the oriental peoples 
and has caused the revision of many tenets of 
Christian groups. Science going alone is a 
fearful iconoclast of faith and the generator 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 81 

of doubt, agnosticism and even atheism. It 
makes godless the vast groups who found their 
gods in and through the material world or 
based their beliefs upon interpretations of life 
and revelation which the developments of sci- 
ence have rendered untenable. It is a sad 
fact but there is nothing more characteristic 
of this period than the skepticism of the world 
in regard to religious things, due to the actual 
achievements of science and the materialistic 
spirit which it has generated and promoted. 
Even in the great laboratories of Christian 
countries, the investigators have become dog- 
matically skeptical of religious verities, and 
not infrequently have arrayed themselves 
against all religion. This attitude of scientists 
in the occidental lands where Christianity is 
religiously supreme, has made the establish- 
ment of an adequate faith along with modern 
science increasingly difficult in non-Christian 
countries. This effect of science upon the mind 
of the race has emphasized the necessity of a 
new inquiry into the basic principles of scien- 
tific truth, the demand for a fuller knowledge 
of nature than science frequently if not gener- 
ally has been able or willing so far to give. 
Science that reveals and systematizes the facts 
of nature and leads to its interpretation should 



82 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

be the handmaiden of religion and in no sense 
its foe. 

Christianity can never make the world Chris- 
tian unless it can make Christian the world's 
science. In all world-plans the anti-Christian 
must be as much the subject of Christianiza- 
tion processes as the non- Christian. Failure 
to reach the former can eventually end in noth- 
ing less than failure to reach the latter. It 
is well recognized that so mighty a force as 
science has come to be in this day cannot be 
checked in its influential impact upon human- 
ity. If it carries a destructive principle the 
labor of constructing or reconstructing re- 
ligious conceptions will inevitably be hindered 
if not stopped. Irrefutable evidence in sup- 
port of this declaration can be easily and 
voluminously adduced. The task of Christian- 
ity is not only to make the non-Christian world 
scientific in order to produce a proper, reason- 
able and sufficient explanation of nature and 
an effective reconstruction of their falsely 
founded religious tenets, but in addition, to 
make the world-of-knowledge Christian in the 
last analysis of its fundamental principles and 
in its impact upon religious faith. Science has 
proceeded upon the basis that it is without re- 
Egion; that is, negative in its attitude and re- 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 83 

lation to religion. In other words, it claims 
that religion is outside its realm of thought 
and application, and it purports to be colorless 
and without obligation with reference to the 
most vital and essential interests of man. This 
is the declared attitude of science and in reality 
this spirit has in no small measure passed from 
the colorless negative to derisive reproach, 
critical antagonism and active opposition. 
Europe and America, the home of Christianity 
in this age, are producing just such a science 
and giving it propagation in all the intellectual 
centers of the world. Such sources will cer- 
tainly send forth poisoning streams that must 
be counteracted if the human mind shall be 
kept free for the thinking of the higher and 
deeper thoughts with which religion is con- 
cerned. The world's science is essential to the 
world's progress, but genuine human progress 
cannot be measured simply by materialistic 
achievements. Man is too great in spiritual 
endowment to be compassed by materialistic 
science. 

Christianity has not only fostered science 
in the Occident; it has been its pathmaker in 
the Orient. The two are the most powerful 
influences at work in the world to-day. Both 
are steadily making for a new view of life and 



84 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

its forces, and are leading to the complete over- 
throw of the conceptions of nature upon which 
religious belief has been sustained. Any- 
Christian propaganda which fails to take cog- 
nizance of the force of science either to de- 
stroy or to construct and support religious 
faith is blind and will find the ditch. Chris- 
tianization of the world can be accomplished 
only by the Christianization of the forces that 
make the world and of these none ranks higher 
than Science. Science is not merely the body 
of systematized facts concerning nature; it is 
a philosophy of nature. Facts must be inter- 
preted in order to eventuate in real knowledge. 
It is the interpretation with which Christianity 
is concerned, because in it are the issues of life. 
The metaphysics behind science furnish the 
bases of its explanations and interpretations, 
and make possible the Christian and spiritual, 
or the agnostic and materialistic views of life, 
its source and destiny. It has not been the 
affirmations of science but the metaphysical 
implications that have been antagonistic to 
religion. No body of scientific facts can truly 
be said to be detrimental to religious faith, but 
scientific theories which frequently have been 
deduced from those facts, have been made to 
carry a philosophy that has been adjudged 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 85 

hostile to the teachings, if not the very spirit 
of Christianity. It is this hostile philosophy 
which is impeding Christianity in its efforts 
to build up an adequate religious faith for 
humanity. 

The man of science deals with phenomena 
but he requires an ultimate reality, a primal 
cause and a rational system of principles by 
which to make competent deductions. He may 
dissolve atoms into electrons but these points 
of energy require of the thinking mind ade- 
quate explanations. As the biologist scruti- 
nizes the movements of life, whether in the 
lowest, the highest, or the intervening forms, 
he is face to face with questionings as to the 
beginnings and endings, as to purpose and des- 
tiny. The geologist reads marvelous history 
in the crust of the earth, and he projects him- 
self back through the centuries and the cycles 
and asks, "Who or what did this? When? 
How?" The scientist cannot content himself 
with answering "What is?" He must ask 
"How came it?" and not infrequently "Why 
came it?" Answers to these questions are not 
made by nature itself but by the inquiring 
human mind. Charles Darwin answered with 
his "Origin of the Species" and the "Descent 
of Man," and Haeckel with his "Riddle of the 



86 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Universe." In these volumes they showed 
their power to acquire facts, but their utter 
inability to interpret them. Louis Agassiz and 
James D. Dana and Joseph Le Conte an- 
swered with a God-made world after the man- 
ner revealed by their geology. The nature 
of the ultimate reality cannot be determined 
by science or scientific method because that 
reality carries in itself attributes which evince 
personality, a force self-determining and self- 
conscious, in a realm beyond science. The sci- 
entist must have a philosophy as well as a sci- 
ence, and in his philosophy, by which he ex- 
plains the forces and principles underlying his 
science, he is on a plane with other thinkers 
and must take cognizance of all the interests 
and principles involved in the human effort 
to know the nature of the One Ultimate Real- 
ity and to come into proper relations to the 
final Being. Upon the plane of this philoso- 
phy men meet to find together their common, 
fit, and legitimate attitude to the Great Crea- 
tive Being. 

The conflict between scientists and religion- 
ists arose in the unwillingness of each to give 
proper recognition to the other on the plane 
of philosophical generalization and determina- 
tion. Science was long weak and hesitating 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 87 

and was held in subjection to religious author- 
ity. The Christian Church for centuries was 
highly unfriendly to any claims of science 
which in any way controverted its interpreta- 
tions of any parts of the Holy Scriptures or 
any of its doctrines formulated from these in- 
terpretations in a different scientific atmos- 
phere. Copernicus and Galileo were severely 
dealt with by the Church when they announced 
their great scientific discoveries, based upon 
well-determined facts, and now universally ac- 
cepted. The evolutionists were fiercely at- 
tacked in the early years and their teachings 
were grossly ridiculed, stubbornly resisted, and 
violently fought as monstrous perversions of 
inspired Scriptures. To be sure, the early evo- 
lutionary theories were far different from those 
of to-day, for in the course of fifty years the- 
ories of evolution have been greatly if not rad- 
ically modified. A marked change has also 
taken place in the attitude of religionists and 
churchmen toward the evolutionary philoso- 
phy. These modifications have been brought 
about on the one hand by scientists who were 
religionists, and on the other by religionists 
who were scientists. Truth can but harmonize 
with truth whatever the realms in which it 
may be found, and truth-seekers and truth- 



88 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

finders are well expected to make common 
cause. Unquestionably what there is of an- 
tagonism in the attitude of science toward re- 
ligion in this day is due in no small way to 
the attitude which a scholastic ecclesiasticism 
assumed in the days of the infancy of science 
and maintained through centuries. S cience has 
become strong, virile, and confident, and still 
holds in vivid memory the onslaughts of the 
earlier unreasoning, self-sufficient and domi- 
nating ecclesiasticism, and has no incentive to 
make common cause with an old foe that has 
not yet fully demonstrated its change of heart. 
This accounts in no small way for the con- 
temptuous attitude of many scientists towards 
religion and its proponents and the confusion 
in scientific circles regarding the greater reali- 
ties lying back of all their marvelous holdings. 
Just so far as medieval ecclesiasticism survives 
and is dominant, science is in antagonism with 
it and must continue to be. Science is the 
champion of the free human spirit in its search 
for truth, and is therefore hostile to the tyr- 
anny of superstition, of obscurantism and des- 
potic ecclesiasticism. 

That there is any necessary conflict between 
reasonable science and reasonable religion can 
scarcely be held in this day by fair-minded 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 89 

thinkers. Europe and America have produced 
many men of the highest scientific attainments 
who were and are devout defenders and faith- 
ful believers in the Christ religion. 

"And science came with humble feet 
To seek the God that faith had found." 

The trouble has been and is with the offenders 
against reason on both sides who decline to 
be reconciled to the opposing party. This can 
be removed only by an adequate acquaintance 
with science by the one and a full knowledge 
of true religion by the other. The hope of 
harmony, cooperation and allied service to the 
world must come with that company of intel- 
ligently Christian men who devote themselves 
to the advancement of science. The conflict 
is not so much between science and religion 
as between a certain class of scientists and a 
certain school of theologians. A self-centered, 
self-righteous, imperialistic ecclesiasticism and 
an agnostic, self-sufficient science cannot be 
other than bitter foes to each other and at 
the same time merciless enemies to the highest 
interests of the race. If the world is to be 
made Christian in spirit and knowledge, these 
must be supplanted by exponents of a Chris- 
tian science and a scientific Christianity. The 



90 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIA 

one is just as essential as the other. The pro- 
mulgators of an agnostic if not an atheistic 
science and the promoters of an ill-founded 
interpretation of Christianity, its principles, 
its purposes and its power, are sowing dragon's 
teeth in the wide fields of humanity which 
eventually will spring forth to wound and de- 
stroy the sons of men. The non-scientific and 
non- Christian world is being made the victim 
of this rashness. "The last state of that man is 
worse than the first." This can be remedied 
only by a new declaration of the fundamentals 
of Christianity, a new interpretation of life 
in keeping with those principles, and a new 
pronouncement of science recognizing the right 
and reasonableness of the Christian revelation, 
of the nature of the Ultimate Reality, the char- 
acter of the Creative Being, and allowing a 
place for the activities of a Supreme Person- 
ality in the world. 

Christianity is compelled to recognize that 
in its efforts at world reconstruction to-day 
it is confronted with powerful, hostile rivals, 
superbly equipped and of massive strength, 
which did not actually exist in the early days 
of missionary endeavor. These have grown 
up in its own household and have been nour- 
ished by its own life. The university with 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 91 

its intellectual aristocracy is a new force in 
world relations and is fast becoming planet- 
wide in extent as well as in influence. It has 
built broad and well-supported approaches to 
the few chosen high and controlling minds 
among all peoples. For hostility to exist be- 
tween great centers of learning and the great- 
est agent for human redemption is to bring 
eternal disaster upon mankind. The course 
of action seems fairly clear. The university 
must be made an outstanding objective in 
world Christianization and a faithful ally as 
well. If Christianity is the proper and ade- 
quate religion for the peoples now denomi- 
nated non-Christian, it should be made such 
for the great centers of knowledge in Europe 
and America from which the highest intellect- 
ual influences are going forth. It is a false 
conception that missionary effort is simply to 
fulfill an imperative obligation to the utterly 
ignorant, debased and helpless heathen world. 
It is that to be sure, but vastly more. The 
purpose of Christian missions is to command 
the forces that make the world and its con- 
ditions. It is not to weakness alone that Chris- 
tianity goes but strength and force and po- 
tentiality. These Christianity must command, 
control, guide and direct if the world moves 



92 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

to its legitimate goal as set forth in the lofty 
purpose of creation, interpreted by Jesus 
Christ. Christian missions is not a mere mat- 
ter of equatorial Africa, Central and Eastern 
Asia and all backward lands. The motives in 
missions originate not in the destitutions of 
man but in the sublime revelation of the ex- 
alted opportunity of the human race to attain 
unto divine conceptions and relations through 
Jesus Christ. The avenues by which Christ 
can best be made known to mankind, Chris- 
tianity must possess and hold. 

The great forces of the university should 
be aligned with the highest agencies of the 
Christian propaganda. It can scarcely be ex- 
pected that this will be done upon the initiative 
of the university. It must come from the 
Christian Church. To be sure, it is frequently 
contended that the Church cannot foster and 
maintain universities, since the universities 
must be allowed their fundamental rights of 
freedom in teaching and freedom in investiga- 
tion and learning, and the Church cannot grant 
such freedom. Why should the Church be 
averse to such freedom if the university is 
made honest in dealing with Christianity? 
Those who have most boisterously demanded 
this freedom have been the worst offenders in 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 93 

denying to Christianity a fair and adequate 
presentation from the lecturer's desk. These 
traducers who have never even matriculated 
in the school of the Galilean Master always 
present Christianity in a false light or dis- 
miss it with a sneer. They confuse Christian- 
ity with sordid traditionalism, stubborn scho- 
lasticism, unmitigated medievalism and tyran- 
nical ecclesiasticism, and shut up their minds 
against the interpretations of Christianity 
made by their own contemporaries. Such ar- 
rogant ignorance has as often marked the col- 
lege professor in his defamation of religion 
as it has the churchman in his denunciation 
of scientific theories. Christianity asks only 
for fair treatment at the hands of those who 
claim the scientific spirit and the scholar's view- 
point. It feels no antagonism towards real 
knowledge or the quest therefor. It entertains 
the most profound regard for great learning 
and its application to the deepest interests of 
the race. It recognizes the fact that Christian- 
ity without scholarship is weak and fanatical, 
and scholarship without Christianity is dead 
and deadening. The two must be combined. 
The world can never be saved by scholarship 
and it can never be made truly Christian with- 
out it. Christian scholarship is the one thing 



94 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

essential to the illumination of the new world 
mind now in process of construction. The 
failure of Christianity to produce such scholar- 
ship, such learning, can result only in disaster 
to the movement now on to make the world 
Christian. 

The Christian Church cannot escape the re- 
sponsibility of not only fostering but also of 
creating great universities as its missionary 
obligation. It must even go further and set 
as a missionary goal the thorough Christianiza- 
tion of the great centers of learning now in 
existence and sending forth immense currents 
of thought. This is by no means outside of 
the range of possibility. This does not mean 
and can never mean ecclesiastical domination. 
It means Christ-control, Christ-direction, and 
Christ-reenforcement in the spirit, purpose 
and supreme objectives of the institution. 
With such institutions of the highest attain- 
ments in scholarship and broadest sweep in 
scientific investigation and philosophical gen- 
eralization, Christianity would be furnished 
with mighty and adequate agencies for the 
construction and reconstruction of human 
thought and its resultant civilization. To be 
satisfied with anything less is to court ultimate 
failure in the final consummation of the com- 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 95 

plete progress of Christianity. That the task 
is monstrously difficult and seemingly fraught 
with the impossible will be readily admitted, 
but it lies athwart the way of ultimate success 
and must be undertaken and carried forward 
with power, wisdom, courage and confidence. 
From it there is no escape. 

Christian missions have come to the day 
when they must think in the large as regards 
agencies as well as fields and goals. Some men 
are fond of quoting Paul: "God has chosen the 
weak things to confound the things that are 
mighty." That translation may carry an erro- 
neous view. The better translation is, "God 
has chosen the things which the world regards 
as destitute of influence in order to put its 
powerful things to shame." It takes force 
to meet force, and energy in proportion to 
the lift. God works on that principle and 
man dares not neglect it. With half the world 
illiterate and the masses of humanity utterly 
abashed and confounded before the forces of 
nature, driven to the creation of gods to satisfy 
and support their ignorance, something majes- 
tically great and comprehensive must be enter- 
prised. With more than half of those who are 
only semi-literate absolutely without compe- 
tent conceptions of the real meaning of things, 



96 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

man or God, there is no place for a program 
of weakness and hopeful passiveness. With 
great centers of learning emitting clouds of 
doubt and muddy streams of entangled 
thought, there is a clear challenge to an ex- 
hibition of power, comprehension and divine 
energy. Little plans were quite sufficient for 
the days of talking like a child, thinking like 
a child, and arguing like a child, but in full 
manhood's maturity one should be done with 
childish ways. The statesman in planning, the 
general in mobilizing forces, the master-builder 
in laying foundations are now in demand at 
the front in the new Christian movement for 
world salvation and direction. Agencies equal 
to the gigantic task must be discovered, cre- 
ated or commandeered. The missionary proj- 
ect grows greater as the scope of its task be- 
comes more clearly defined. If there were no 
object beyond the conversion of a few souls 
to the Christian faith in order to insure their 
safe delivery to the heavenly world, the bur- 
den would not be increased by the changing 
conditions of the human family; it would be 
simply the matter of reaching those individ- 
uals. But the Church to-day cannot be con- 
tent with such a conception of its full duty. 
The world task is world construction and re- 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 97 

construction to meet the requirements of 
Christ's principles, ideals and passions. The 
thought, religion, social relations, purposes and 
aspirations of the entire race are to be brought 
into Christ's domain and be made to bear his 
spirit and fit into his plan for mankind. With 
such a scope the task of missions becomes ap- 
palling unless influences of like sweep and 
agencies of like scale can be put into operation. 
The Church must set itself resolutely to pro- 
vide these agencies and bind them irrevocably 
to the work to be done. 

Education is unquestionably the most deter- 
minative process for thought reconstruction as 
well as construction and is therefore the feature 
of primary and chief concern in missionary 
propaganda. There must be great institutions 
of the highest merit and thoroughly Christian 
in the strategic centers of the world's peoples. 
The world needs a school system equal to the 
demands of the world intelligence, wisely con- 
structed and rigidly enforced, until intellectual 
destitution is entirely obliterated. Without 
adequate educational facilities, there can be 
no hope of world-wide uplift. That the people 
would appreciate and embrace the advantages 
which educational institutions would insure 
cannot be expected. The demand for educa- 



98 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tion and the thirst for knowledge must be cre- 
ated. It is this which constitutes the real 
problem in education. The society in which 
gross illiteracy exists has no competent answer 
to the question, "Why should I be educated, 
why should I know things?" Those who com- 
mand that society are frequently quite content 
with the existing state because usually their 
interests are in some way advanced thereby. 
They may be politicians, or traders, or em- 
ployers, or priestly ecclesiastics. Illiteracy be- 
fits best their selfish purposes, and they are 
not merely indifferent, but are even antagonis- 
tic to movements that would lift the people to 
a new level of thought and living. Common 
intelligence will equip men for democracy ; and 
an intelligent democracy will not endure an 
oligarchy. Common intelligence lifts the pro- 
ducer and the laborer to a position of com- 
petent judgment and he will not tolerate the 
deception of the trader or the oppression of 
the employer. Common intelligence gives wis- 
dom to the worshiper and he will no longer 
bow to an image, mutter prayer formula? and 
submit to priestly authority over soul destiny. 
Wherever there is oligarchy in government, 
oppression in industry, and priestcraft in re- 
ligion, gross illiteracy always abounds, whether 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 99 

in the Orient, southern Asia, the Mediterra- 
nean littoral or Latin America. Which is the 
cause and which is the effect? Whatever the 
answer the fact remains that an adequate school 
system for all mankind cannot be constructed 
and sent in, but it must grow out of the people's 
consciousness of their own need and be adapted 
to that need. The question then arises, How 
can the consciousness of the people be awak- 
ened and aroused to its need? What will de- 
termine the character of that need? This pre- 
education stimulus must find its sources out- 
side what the people now have or have ever 
had and be sustained by motives born of ex- 
alted purpose. 

IV 

The impact of Christian civilization has 
awakened educational interests in proportion 
to its force. Central Asia, Middle Africa, the 
vast islands of the sea where Christian civiliza- 
tion has been little felt show small sign of 
any educational aspirations. The people of the 
Near East have sat passive under the deaden- 
ing blight of Mohammedanism. Japan has 
taken over bodily all that Christian civilization 
has had to offer. What it could not adopt, it 
adapted, including not only the habiliments of 



100 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

peace, but also the implements of war. The 
country is small, the population compact, the 
government highly centralized and any impact 
could be readily distributed and quickly assim- 
ilated. Its school system is comprehensive, 
compulsory educational laws are in force, illit- 
eracy has been practically wiped out, great uni- 
versities have been established and are marvel- 
ously patronized, and splendid institutions of 
technology have been provided for large bodies 
of earnest students. This educational devel- 
opment may be ascribed to the outgrowth of 
the new national consciousness, but the stim- 
ulus had an external source. That which 
makes Japan great to-day is what it received 
through Christianity and the products of 
Christianity. Its school system was the crea- 
tion of a Christian missionary. There is no 
modern mission that owes more to Christianity 
than Japan, the little giant nation of the entire 
East. The pity of it is that the Japanese are 
not ready and willing to make this acknowl- 
edgment, to go farther and accept Christianity 
as their religion, national and personal. The 
Christian Church should press constantly for 
this decision. China has not received such an 
impact nor come to such an awakening. Its 
territory is immense and its population prodi- 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 101 

gious. For centuries it has been sufficient unto 
itself. The impact of the outside world was 
vigorously withstood until within the last quar- 
ter of a century. The Christian nations forced 
open its ports and compelled the establishment 
of relations with the country. The Christian 
missionary has given freely of his sacrificial 
life and has mediated unto the people some 
benefits of the Christian civilization. But 
China has as yet built meagerly a school sys- 
tem and educational institutions, although it 
has done so in proportion to the assimilation 
of the impact of Christianity and Christian 
civilization. India has never felt any religious 
impact from the English government. This is 
in keeping with the British policy. Because of 
this, one is inclined to believe, there has never 
been any real demand in India for universal 
education. To-day there are on in that land 
the most remarkable mass movements towards 
Christianity. In no country has there ever 
been such a tidal wave of the common people 
toward Christianity. The movement is creat- 
ing in the people an almost unreliable demand 
for education. They want now to read, to 
read the Bible, and to read of the world from 
which the Christians have come. Why is it 
that only now they want to read? In the 



102 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Levant and in all other parts of the world 
it is just as true that the impact of modern 
evangelical Christianity produces this educa- 
tional reaction and in proportion to that im- 
pact. The quality of the education sought is 
largely if not entirely determined by the direct- 
ness and force of the genuinely Christian in- 
fluence felt. 

The world is being awakened to its educa- 
tional needs not only by the impact of Chris- 
tian civilization, the product of Christian teach- 
ing and living, but also as the direct result 
of the very seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ 
which has been widely sown in the earth, and 
which has in many places come to a glorious 
harvest. Missionaries of Christ are uniformly 
educators of the people. This may not always 
be true of simply missionaries of a church. 
The seed of the gospel is a life germ and 
quickens the very soil into which it goes. The 
influence of the gospel in this new formative 
period has already become stupendous. With 
twenty-five thousand missionaries on the field 
and eighty-six institutions of higher learning, 
five hundred twenty-two normal school and 
training classes, one thousand seven hundred 
boarding and high schools, two hundred ninety 
industrial training schools, thirty thousand ele- 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 103 

mentary and village schools in operation the 
work of education may be said to be going for- 
ward. It is not so much the actual literary 
instruction in these institutions which is most 
significant; it is the power of the great ideals 
which they generate that is tearing open new 
channels for the mental life of the world. 
They release the intellectual energies of young 
leaders and inspire them to the reconstruction 
of the thought of their people. They are pro- 
ducing an intellectual ferment in the staid 
mentalities of the "cabined and confined" souls, 
and this will eventuate in the explosion of old 
conceptions and the clearing away of a mass 
of dumped debris of the centuries. The 
achievements in education in one century of 
evangelical missions have been truly phenom- 
enal. They are but the index to what can be 
possible with agencies commensurate with the 
task. 

The Christian missionary keeps before him 
constantly the great objective in Christian ed- 
ucation, which is the awakening, energizing, de- 
velopment and equipment of personality. 
That is the sphere of Christian creation and 
salvation. The materialistic educator, whether 
agnostic, atheist or religiously indifferent, 
focuses his energies on things to be known; 



104* MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the Christian educator upon persons to be 
evolved and brought to mastery in the world 
of power. The awakening of personality to 
the consciousness of its own powers, capabil- 
ities and purposes is primary with the Christian 
teacher, and he draws on all resources for the 
achievement of this end. The quality of the 
human mind is immeasurably elevated when 
the purpose of knowledge is shown to be the 
production of individuality. Pagan teachers 
are not all confined to non- Christian lands. 
What else are those who erect the idols of 
science, philosophy, and classical lore, worship 
before them, and leave their students to get 
their uplift by witnessing that worship? The 
Christian teacher teaches persons as well as 
subjects. His religion has put man in the 
foreground of his thought and his responsibil- 
ity. The object of all revelation, whether by 
creation or inspiration, is the edification and 
salvation of man, the individual, the person- 
ality, the being capable of power and the exer- 
cise of dominion over the material world. The 
Christian missionary has gone forth to exalt 
personality in the world and he has done it, and 
because of that fact he has made way and pro- 
vided means for the largest progress of man- 
kind. The religion which he promulgates and 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 105 

promotes keeps personality at the center, 
whether in private life or public society, in the 
school room or the sanctuary. 

The Christian's philosophy of the world in 
which he lives is an outgrowth of the emphasis 
on personality which the Christian religion re- 
quires. He lives in a personal world. A self- 
conscious, self -determining, knowing Being 
was the infinite cause and responsible agent in 
creation and is the power by which all things 
move to their appointed ends. The universe 
is the manifestation of his will, his thought, his 
purpose and finds explanation in his poten- 
tialities. The Infinite Cause being intelligent, 
moral and personal and in complete control, 
there can be no hazardous chance or imper- 
sonal concatenation of forces operating loosely 
in the world to the possible final peril of man 
and creation. Nature is not some extraneous 
unrelated force, but the method in which mani- 
festations of energy are made. The character 
of the final energy is determined by its source. 
There is a "far off divine event to which the 
whole creation moves/' because the force in 
the movement is the Personal Power that in- 
augurated the creation. With Supreme Rea- 
son and Supreme Righteousness, coupled with 
Supreme Power, in the ongoing of all things, 



106 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the world is in a legitimate way to consummate 
its original divine goal. God is concerned with 
the problems of this world because they are 
His, as well as man's, and he has pledged his 
powers for their solution. He who believes 
that God created the world and then went 
away is the most deceived of men. God rules 
the world by acting in it and through it and 
not by imposing His authority upon it. The 
Divine Personality is immanent in man's 
world. 

An educational system built upon such a 
philosophy and carried forward with the pur- 
pose of lifting human personality to the high- 
est possible power cannot fail to revolutionize 
the thought of a people given over to animism, 
pantheism, fatalism and aspirations for Nir- 
vana. The introduction of a clear-cut con- 
ception of a personal God, intelligent, ethical, 
with unity, self -consciousness, self-control and 
self -direction to the thinking of the Orient 
would dispel the appalling haze and set the 
sun in its bewildering sky. The Orient is 
wanting in the sense of personality, whether in 
the infinite or finite. The identification of na- 
ture with spirit forces is due to a lack of com- 
prehension of what nature is and what spirit is. 
To explain nature even by the most complete 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 107 

science and fail to explain spirit by just as 
complete and well-founded philosophy will 
leave confusion worse confounded and turn the 
mind to inevitable agnosticism. Destroying 
man's false conceptions of nature or of spirits 
is not a complete objective, and standing alone, 
a very doubtful end in itself. What man 
needs is such a philosophy of the world and 
the sentient forces that act upon it that nature 
slips normally into its own place, the creatures 
of imagination pass with the lifted fog of in- 
comprehension, and personal powers are en- 
throned in all dominions. Man in the ill- 
illumined world needs the light of science, to 
be sure, but more he needs an interpretation 
of the material world and a philosophy of 
human life and destiny in keeping with 
his demonstrated worth and highest aspira- 
tions. The Christian education purports to 
give this interpretation, and in conformity 
with it to reconstruct the thought of the mind- 
enthralled peoples. Personality is the key 
principle by which Christianity hopes to un- 
lock the minds of the race. Whether in sci- 
ence, philosophy, government, society or re- 
ligion, personality is the active principle and 
determines the state and progress of all. A 
less objective than the full development of this 



108 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

supreme and controlling factor in world life 
and thought, education can not afford to set 
and faithfully endeavor to achieve. 

The missionary in the new era must be a 
philosopher; that is, be able to propose, ex- 
pound and sustain a philosophy of the world 
in harmony with the spiritual view of things 
which Jesus revealed and always maintained. 
He opened new channels of religious thinking 
because he created new conceptions of God 
and the world in which man lived. Paul, in 
the spirit of the teachings of Jesus, dealt with 
Greek philosophy as a master because his view 
of the entities which the philosophers treated 
made their teachings vain. The day came, 
however, when this same Hellenism was trans- 
formed under the influence of the gospel and 
became directive in theological thought. Hu- 
man philosophy is the natural product of the 
developed human mind in its reaction to the 
world in which it exists, and it cannot be sup- 
pressed. Man will think, and his systematized 
thought becomes his philosophy. The nature 
of that philosophy is determined by the mat- 
ter and manner of his thinking. The logic may 
be good and the conclusion false, because the 
premises from which the thinking began are 
without proper foundations. The particular 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 109 

may be taken for the universal and the entire 
fabric of thought fall as a consequence. This 
is exactly the case in the non-Christian 
and semi- Christian world. The conclusions 
reached and fashioned into principles have a 
false or inadequate foundation. The material 
world has been only partially known, and yet 
a comprehensive philosophy of nature, from 
which has come the philosophy of life and re- 
ligion, has been built up. Error has been un- 
avoidable. Nature has been interpreted on 
too limited knowledge and the human life has 
received false direction by. this improper in- 
terpretation. The only hope of changing the 
basis of life is in the full knowledge of nature 
and its methods and a reasonable philosophy 
that will unify and interpret all the facts of 
nature in harmony with the personal principle 
which Christianity has made essential to crea- 
tion and the movement of the universe. The 
Christian philosophy of the material world is 
absolutely necessary to the thought of the race 
becoming Christian. The reconstruction of 
the human mind can be satisfactorily achieved 
in no other way. 

To meet the philosophy of the people to be 
Christianized, the missionary must be ac- 
quainted with the field of philosophical think- 



110 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ing and thoroughly settled in a Christian phi- 
losophy which he can clearly expound and 
forcibly maintain. In the city of Montevideo, 
the capital of the most progressive of the 
South American republics, the show windows 
of the book stores are filled with the works of 
Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel and Comte. In 
South Brazil the leaders in politics and educa- 
tion are Positivists in philosophy, religion and 
the principles of government. In both places 
the thought leaders are enemies of the dom- 
inant church and practically agnostic in all 
thinking. To be sure, they need a new inter- 
pretation of Christianity far superior to any 
they have had, but they will not be inclined to 
accept it until they are converted to a new 
philosophy built upon modern scientific facts 
and principles. This condition is rapidly de- 
veloping in all parts of the world. It can be 
met only by an interpretation of the world 
which is convincing. The missionary who will 
be equal to this condition must be intelligent 
in science and philosophy. Much pseudo- 
philosophy in the form of theosophy and oc- 
cult spiritualism has arisen in many sections 
among people who have some intellectual con- 
ceits but limited intellectual equipment. They 
can be made free only by teachers who can 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 111 

turn light upon their immature thinking. This 
portion of the people, with all their intellectual 
foibles and pretensions, can be said to show a 
certain mental awakening and to be in the 
process of thought reconstruction. They re- 
quire new masters for the steps ahead. The 
missionaries who cannot show thought and 
comprehension of science and philosophy equal 
to theirs will necessarily be relegated in their 
labors to a lower intellectual stratum of so- 
ciety. If they cannot compete in thought 
with mature minds they must seek the realm 
of childhood and delayed intelligence as their 
field of labor. Unfortunately this field is 
more largely occupied than the upper, and all 
because of this lack of equipment in science 
and philosophy. But the upper must be pos- 
sessed if civilization is to be transformed. The 
strongholds of civilization should be captured 
for Christianity. The forces for this achieve- 
ment must be found. The new adventures in 
missions must be into the realm of the masters 
of society, and plans for placing genuine Chris- 
tianity with its philosophy and interpretation 
of the facts of the world strongly before these 
leaders of the race should be wisely and speed- 
ily projected. 

The world cannot be made Christian with- 



112 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

out a proper interpretation of nature, but that 
interpretation is based almost entirely upon 
the conception of God. Heathenism and 
paganism are due to an inadequate conception 
of God. Pantheism with its resultant poly- 
theism came out of the haze as to God and his 
relation to the world. God that explains the 
universe, with man its greatest fact, makes 
paganism, pantheism and the entire fabric of 
demonology utterly baseless. The doctrine of 
God is the missionary's chief means of thought 
reconstruction in the peoples of his field. It is 
there his philosophy of the world begins and 
there it will end. When science sweeps away 
all the conceptions of nature which half the 
people of the earth now hold, a thing it will 
eventually do, the doctrine of God will be the 
bridge over which the mind will pass to the 
newly discovered mainland of abiding truth. 
Theism gives to science and religion a common 
source and justification, and offers the basis 
for the new thought life of mankind. Without 
such a philosophy as theism presents and main- 
tains, the missionary is totally at sea in the 
presence of the animism of the unlettered, the 
agnosticism of the erudite, the fatalism of the 
Moslem and the medievalism of the ecclesias- 
tic. Grounded on theism with its attendant 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 113 

philosophy of personalism, the missionary is 
thoroughly equipped for interpreting to men 
the world in which they live and the God from 
whom they came and in whom they live, move 
and have their being. With such a knowledge 
men are ready to lay hold on life and lift it to 
the fulfillment of the divine purpose. 

The intellectual atmosphere of the mission- 
ary is the chief element in his or her recon- 
structive influence in the community. The 
missionary is expected to stand for something 
intellectually and be capable of aiding the peo- 
ple to think in new channels and arrive at new 
points of view. The mind that quickens mind 
and that starts new strains of thought coursing 
through the system is a battery of great power 
in society. An exhibition of intellectual 
strength and honesty enlists sympathy and es- 
tablishes confidence. The character of mind, 
the breadth of its knowledge, the integrity of 
its thinking, the force of its thoughts, mark 
the possessor and measure his capacity for in- 
tellectual leadership. The mental life of the 
missionary must show growth with the years 
to meet the increased expectations and require- 
ments. But the intellectual equipment for de- 
livering a true philosophy of life is of primary 
importance in the work of reconstructing and 



114 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

constructing the thought of the human race. 
The preparation of missionaries, whatever else 
it may include, should have as its objective the 
making of men and women intellectually ca- 
pable of taking the mental bearings of the 
people they are to serve, and setting the 
courses by which they may find themselves in 
the common life of mankind. They are to lead 
men to think forcibly, honestly, ethically, the 
thoughts of God in their application to society 
and government. They are to quicken into 
action the productive powers of the human in- 
tellect which under the lead of the great ideals 
and principles that Christianity sets forth 
eventuate in a new human creation. There is 
no place nor justification for intellectual flabbi- 
ness in the missionary of the new era. There 
is a challenge to the highest intellectual endow- 
ment and equipment in the world's acute need 
of intellectual reconstruction. 



What is it that Christianity must do in the 
world to make all the people think Christian? 
That question Christian missionaries cannot 
retire. It must be faced now and kept ever in 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 115 

the foreground of all necessary endeavor. The 
world will not act Christian until it thinks 
Christian. First, it must be realized that men- 
tal inertia exists in a vast proportion of the 
human family and that it must be overcome 
before there can be anything worth the name. 
To remove the inertia and enable and incite 
the people to think is a gigantic task, but 
Christianity is under solemn obligation to face 
it as its task and face it with a force sufficient 
to its mastery. The forces of Christianity are 
equal to this task if they could be mobilized 
and unified for a common deliverance upon the 
one matter. But it will require the joint ac- 
tion of government, commerce, learning and 
religion, set to lift humanity out of the fearful 
state of intellectual destitution. Such joint 
action is not only a possibility, but human 
conditions make it a human and a Christian 
obligation. The time has come when Chris- 
tian missionary propaganda must employ all 
possible influence for the mobilization of all 
Christian forces for the preparation of the 
world to think, and to think Christian. The 
removal of mental inertia and the stimulation 
of half the world to aspirations for knowledge 
and the means for obtaining it are of primary 



116 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

consideration. This will require not only the 
establishment of many educational institutions, 
but the construction and inauguration of com- 
prehensive school systems. To this labor 
Christian missionaries may well give sympathy 
and strong support and that directive influ- 
ence which will insure open avenues for the 
production of Christian thinking. 

The missionary propaganda, if criticism is 
permissible, has been wanting in a clear-cut 
educational policy. It is indeed remarkable 
how much has been accomplished in the for- 
eign fields in view of the fearful mental in- 
ertia, the meager resources placed at the mis- 
sionary's command, and the limited training 
of the average missionary in educational mat- 
ters. But there has been no educational sys- 
tem and little effort at coordination in what 
has been done by the various societies. Even 
the educational institutions projected and 
maintained by the same organization usually 
have little or no relation to each other. The 
time has come when leaders in the missionary 
movement must think in terms of an educa- 
tional system with standardized courses and 
coordinated institutions. Only in this way can 
the several countries be best educationally 
served, the nucleus and example for a national 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 117 

system be created, and the products of Chris- 
tian effort be conserved. 

On many fields the educational forces 
greatly need reenf orcement from the Christian 
educational leaders in the highly developed 
countries. The counsel of great educational 
thinkers and administrators in the United 
States and Great Britain, who know the ob- 
jective of the missionary movement and are 
in sympathy with it, is needed in the formula- 
tion of policies and systems which the mission- 
aries will carry out. Such Christian educators 
of comprehensive thought and extended ex- 
perience should be related and even personally 
attached to the movements for the common 
education of the people and that higher in- 
struction necessary to the production of 
leaders. This would probably necessitate vis- 
its to the fields by these educators in order to 
obtain a very intimate and comprehensive 
knowledge of conditions. But whatever may 
be the requirement, the end in view is so far- 
reaching that the best possible intelligence 
should be enlisted for its attainment. 

The high objective in the missionary propa- 
ganda of reconstructing the thinking of the 
world cannot be attained without great centers 
of learning in the midst of the people to be 



118 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

reached which sustain the atmosphere and 
evince the control of the Christ spirit. Leaders 
must be produced for all realms and depart- 
ments of social and national life who can think 
great thoughts and will think constantly Chris- 
tian. The ultimate aim should never be lost 
sight of, the production of the towering Chris- 
tian leader for government, for business, for 
scientific and philosophical instruction and for 
definite Christian service. Governments can 
never be put on a higher basis if minds are not 
produced imbued with great ideas and ideals 
of government. Society can never rise to a 
new level except by the ability and spirit of 
native and national leaders intellectually keen 
and masterful and thoroughly acquainted with 
the progress of the race. Universities that are 
simply aggregations of professional and voca- 
tional schools, whose courses are built upon 
preliminary work in secondary institutions 
never reaching beyond two years of collegiate 
training, and seldom going that far, cannot 
meet the case. Government schools have 
usually as their chief purpose the preparation 
of governmental employees and political lead- 
ers. Such universities and governmental 
schools dominate all Latin America. As a 
consequence there is lacking the high mental 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 119 

development of a great citizenship for a genu- 
ine democracy; and genuine democracy 
does not exist, but rather an oligarchy. There 
must be a higher thinking than these institu- 
tions produce, and freer, for the inauguration 
of new and larger political and social move- 
ments. Scholarship that commands science 
and philosophy as well as the classics and his- 
tory is indispensable to great thinking and 
true. The production of such scholarship by 
fully developed native or national scientists 
and philosophers can be hoped for only at the 
end of a long process of constructive instruc- 
tion in genuine learning and genuine Chris- 
tianity. The world must be brought to the 
conception that education is the process of ex- 
panding horizons. Woodrow Wilson, teacher 
and statesman, has said: "The object of a lib- 
eral training is not learning, but discipline and 
the enlightenment of the mind. The educated 
man is to be discovered by his point of view, 
by the temper of his mind, by his attitude 
toward life and his fair way of thinking." 
Whatever else Christian missions may do, 
without great centers for the production of 
Christian scholarship of the highest possible 
merit and comprehensive sweep, the superb 
objective of reconstructing the thought of the 



120 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

race cannot be attained, and Christianity will 
have lost its best, if not its only, chance of 
making the world think Christian. Through 
knowledge and knowledge only Christianity 
gets its voice and delivers its full message of 
life and destiny. Men will never come to their 
stature except as they are brought to the eter- 
nal foundation of truth. Christianity may ex- 
claim with the words of St. Paul: "A great 
door and effectual is opened unto me." 

If ever educated young men and young 
women had a challenge to a task worthy of 
their highest powers, they are having it to-day 
from the vast illiterate mind-locked and life- 
darkened mass in the non-Christian and semi- 
Christian world. They are met on the very 
threshold of their careers with a Macedonian 
cry more urgent than fell upon the ears of St. 
Paul, "Come over and help us." But only 
those who can help need go. Masters of sci- 
ence, interpreters in philosophy, princes in 
knowledge who can think God's thoughts after 
Christ, and who are capable of skilled labor 
in constructing and reconstructing human 
thought, have an open way in a great world. 
To this challenge may the answer be in strong 
and sustained chorus: 



RECONSTRUCTING MAN'S THINKING 121 

Lead on, O King eternal, 

We follow, not with fears; 
For gladness breaks like morning 

Where'er thy face appears; 
Thy cross is lifted o'er us; 

We journey in its light — 
The crown awaits the conquest, 

Lead on, O God of might. 



LECTURE III: CREATING HUMAN- 
MINDEDNESS 



The missionary propaganda of evangelical 
Christianity began with the burning impulses 
of devout persons who heard the call of the 
world and felt the thrust of the Christ mission 
and injunction. They went forth to "save 
men" through their faith in Jesus Christ as a 
personal Redeemer. Their own subjective ex- 
perience was the impelling force and the pri- 
mary objective for the lost heathen peoples. 
They went forth to preach "Jesus Christ and 
him crucified," and that only as the gospel of 
salvation. Their zeal was holy and intense; 
their purpose divine and resolute. They were 
upheld by the faithful prayers of the churches 
that they left behind, who had no other 
conceptions of the missionary's labor than that 
of preaching the simple gospel. The churches, 
with the missionaries, believed in the efficacy 
of this gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit 
to consummate the object of these tremendous 

sacrifices and consuming labors. While the 

122 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 123 

missionaries found the execution of their pro- 
gram more troublesome than they had ex- 
pected, and the conditions under which "salva- 
tion" might be accomplished extremely diffi- 
cult to produce, the churches at home came 
very slowly to a realization of the necessity of 
a larger process for human salvation than they 
had first conceived. 

The missionary movement began as the re- 
sponse to the call of the individual. Men hear 
only the calls which they are capable of receiv- 
ing. The Church of the early centuries of its 
Roman era heard with the ears of Rome which 
had been accustomed to world terms. It took 
people in the mass, as did the empire to whose 
heritage it succeeded. Its missionary propa- 
ganda was in the mass movement. Nations 
were born into this historic church in a day. 
This has always been true of Romanism. Not 
so have been the missionary methods and re- 
sults in Protestantism. The evangelical mis- 
sionary propaganda has been almost entirely 
by non-conformists, independent and individ- 
ualistic religious bodies. Baptists and Pres- 
byterians, Congregationalists and Methodists, 
have been the chief agents in missionary activi- 
ties, while the State Churches have been con- 
tent with meager endeavors. These great 



124 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

bodies of religious individualists have very 
naturally sent forth the bearers of an individ- 
ualistic salvation, and have been slow to recog- 
nize any other reason for the missionary effort 
than that of simply declaring a gospel of per- 
sonal salvation in Jesus Christ. So far as pos- 
sible, these Christian bodies have typed the 
men and women who have represented them in 
the non- Christian lands. The world made no 
call to them; it was the lost souls in heathen 
darkness. 

The individualist conceptions and convic- 
tions regarding religion found a most favor- 
able atmosphere during the last three cen- 
turies. Some of the greatest thinkers of the 
period looked upon society as simply a com- 
pact among individuals. Edmund Burke 
said : "It is a partnership in all science, a part- 
nership in all art, a partnership in every virtue 
and in all perfections." Hobbs and Locke, 
great philosophers, held the extremely indi- 
vidualistic view that society was simply a con- 
tract among persons who were independent, 
self-governing, and free from control except 
by contract, and that contract was formed sim- 
ply for mutual advantages. There was no 
sense of responsibility for the community life, 
nor a sense of the necessity for society. The 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 125 

members of the wild tribes without restraint 
of society or responsibility for the social body 
were admirable types of free men, of truly 
human beings. The natural rights were in- 
alienable. This philosophy of the individu- 
alist in govermnent and social relations was 
dominant in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. It was in this same period that in- 
dependentism showed itself in church and 
state. The Puritans and the Covenanters were 
exponents of this philosophy and were promul- 
gators and promoters of it in England and 
America. Individualism in religion and in 
government, state and ecclesiastical, was char- 
acteristic not only of that period, but of the 
outcome of that period. The Declaration of 
Independence in America bore unmistakable 
marks of this doctrine, and the long standing 
doctrine of state rights was not put aside until 
the Civil War, when it was overcome in the 
contest to abolish slavery. But the spirit of 
the people of the United States to this day, as 
shown in the presidential campaign of 1920, 
responds quickly to the appeal of individualism 
in government and world society. The sense 
of community responsibility, when the com- 
munity is the world, is but poorly developed in 
comparison with the sense of individualistic 



126 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

importance. The contract theory of society is 
still in the ascendency. The individual unit, 
whether personal or national, has no obliga- 
tion except what it assumes. Salvation of the 
person or the nation is individualistic and is the 
supreme end to be sought. Such is the phi- 
losophy whether in government or religion. 
Under its powerful influence the evident teach- 
ings of the gospel and of the prophets were 
neglected, if not ignored. 

The Reformation may be in no limited de- 
gree responsible for this individualism in re- 
ligion. Romanism has always abused individu- 
alism by its imposition of social control. It 
has always denied the right of individual opin- 
ion, the power of individual action, and the 
possibility of salvation by individual means. 
The Christian community, as epitomized in 
the church organization, has subsumed the in- 
dividual and makes bold to assert its sufficiency 
for consummating the highest interests, hu- 
man and divine, to which the individual may 
be entitled. The rebellion against such un- 
warranted religious tyranny found expression 
in the most pronounced religious individualism. 
Not only were the possibilities of individual 
religious experience stressed and stoutly main- 
tained, but they were made the chief objectives 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 127 

in all religious effort. With the opening of 
America religious individualism found the at- 
mosphere and conditions in which it thrived. 
Worshiping God according to the dictates of 
conscience and not according to the dictates of 
ecclesiastics led to the most far-reaching ex- 
pressions of individualism. That religion be- 
came exceedingly forceful and effective 
thereby cannot be questioned. Denomination- 
alism had free rein and religious views were 
unrestrained. The distinctively American 
Churches came to their strength and mass 
by emphasis on individual religion and the 
processes by which the individual became per- 
sonally religious. The churches which are dis- 
tinctively ritualistic are largely importations, 
being brought by vast bodies of unassimilated 
immigrants. But the assertive, aggressive, 
strongly spiritual churches of the United 
States have been and are vigorously individu- 
alistic in their theology and in their methods 
of propaganda. The personal Christian life, 
through regeneration by the Holy Spirit, is 
the essential thing in the thought and life of 
the American Churches. 

It is well recognized that the redemption of 
a lost world must begin with the redemption 
of the lost man. But in order to complete re- 



128 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

demption he must be reconstructed in every- 
thing that distinguishes him as a man. He not 
only thinks poorly, but he thinks error and evil 
and is not ashamed. His will is not only in- 
adequate to his earthly task, but it is perverse. 
The very spirit of him is distorted. He is out 
of relations with the world in which he lives. 
He is at war with the nature of which he is a 
part. He grovels without vision and resents 
the fate that binds him. Man is lost, and be- 
fore he can get back home he must establish 
intelligent relations with his surroundings and 
get his direction for the new course. What 
must take place in him before he finds him- 
self, relates himself properly and adequately 
to his world, and gets his bearings for a destiny 
that covers more than one sphere? Vision de- 
pends upon the organs of sight, but also upon 
the atmosphere through which the eyes are to 
see. It was an apostolic discovery that the gos- 
pel of Christianity had in it the power to pro- 
duce the experience of personal salvation. 
Has it also the power of such thorough recon- 
struction of man as will eventuate in the re- 
construction of this world? This power hu- 
manity must realize before the world becomes 
Christian. 

While redemption is of man, it is not of man 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 129 

in his solitariness. Man is not a detached be- 
ing, but, as Homer made Ulysses to say, a 
part of all he had met. He is also a part of 
much he has not met. It was the compre- 
hensiveness of the humanity of Jesus that en- 
abled him to exhibit the perfect life. The 
complete salvation of the individual must in- 
volve the sources from which the individu- 
ality is made up. The Christian ascetics of the 
middle centuries realized this and sought de- 
tachment in monasteries and convents in order 
to attain holiness. But they found themselves 
incapable of detachment. Bernard of Clair- 
vaux was one of the most saintly of these, and 
yet his busy hands made kings to tremble and 
popes to rise and fall. "No man liveth unto 
himself." The inheritance from Adam was 
the commonality of humanity, and only 
through that commonality will humanity ever 
be able to regain the first estate. Selfishness 
is a poor mark of holiness, and yet sainthood 
has usually been sought in abnegation of hu- 
man claims. Bondage to Christ can never 
mean less than obligation to man. There is 
personal salvation through faith in Jesus 
Christ, but in its very nature it carries the 
sense of responsibility for what Christ came 
to accomplish. To be a Christian is to have 



130 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the sense of human kinship accentuated and 
the demands of human welfare and human re- 
demption made imperative. 

The objectives in missionary endeavor 
should be first clearly defined, as they regulate 
the agencies and processes that may be em- 
ployed in the consummation of the supreme 
end. Is the objective to save men out of the 
world and to build up for that purpose a 
church in the world destined to hold aloof from 
the world? Is "saving souls" the primary, the 
inclusive, the only genuine objective in mis- 
sionary endeavor? Is Christ preached when 
this gospel of selection and election is pro- 
claimed? Did Christ have as his mission the 
populating of heaven, or the regeneration and 
final redemption of the human race, whether 
that race occupied this world or some other? 
The latter is a much greater task and the 
processes involved are enormous, and the prob- 
able time required indefinitely vast. Is this 
latter possible to Christ, and would it be 
worthy of his divine labors? The idea of the 
salvation of the human race as a race, with all 
that it involves and that this program involves, 
has usually been ignored. Men have spoken 
of the by-products of Christian activities, 
meaning those results which could not be tabu- 



CREATING HUMAN-IONDEDNESS 131 

lated under conversions and church member- 
ship. This is a mistake. There are no by- 
products of Christianity or of the Christian 
propaganda, but products all. direct and de- 
signed. The obligation and function of Chris- 
tianity is to change this world into a kingdom 
of God. It is its province to stimulate and 
guide the progress of humanity, to command, 
control, direct and sustain the energies of 
mankind, to imbue all human relations with 
the spirit of Christ, and to create the confi- 
dent consciousness in human lives of divine re- 
lationship and divine kinship. 



n 

There have always been two views of the es- 
sential and primary work of missions. The 
exclusivists hold that the Scriptural mode of 
evangelization had to do only with the pro- 
claiming of the gospel, and that this is the only 
proper work of a missionary. They do not 
recognize the fact that the apostles preached 
to a people prepared for centuries and by their 
entire history for the reception of the gospel. 
They had the prophets as a background of all 
that the apostolic evangelists proclaimed. The 
Messiah had long been expected. The entire 



132 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

world with which they dealt was permeated 
with the atmosphere of the basal religion upon 
which Christianity built. There was no need 
of a transformation of thought and reconstruc- 
tion of society in order to create an intelligent 
apprehension of the new doctrine. The history 
of the Christian movement from the apostolic 
days until now shows decidedly that Chris- 
tianity moves upon a prepared way and with- 
out this preparation has never taken immedi- 
ate hold upon the human heart. Before the 
Christ fact has become real and vital to the 
conscious soul there has always been the con- 
version of the mind and the preparation of the 
very conditions of human conceptions. The 
view that the preaching of the gospel is the 
only true work of missions has not been held 
long by those who became great missionaries 
and who have been the mighty forces in bring- 
ing in the new era of world life, thought and 
religious inquiry. These missionaries found 
that they must prepare the soil before a har- 
vest could be produced. 

Robert Morrison labored in China eighteen 
years without a conversion and could count 
only six after a quarter of a century of faith- 
ful, heroic, God-directed apostolic work. Why 
was that? Why was it that William Carey, 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 133 

the consecrated cobbler, the great path-breaker 
of modern missions, found it exceedingly de- 
sirable, if not absolutely necessary, to provide 
a school, a printing press, a physician and sur- 
geon as indispensable to the successful preach- 
ing of the gospel in India? Why was it that 
Alexander Duff, that great Scotchman, after 
a decade of untiring effort, set himself to de- 
stroy the ancient system of life by the intro- 
duction of western science and literature, and 
justified himself by declaring, "We directed 
our view not merely to the present, but to 
future generations"? He held from the be- 
ginning that the receptive, plastic minds must 
be molded to the Christian system of thought 
and life in order to the proper conception of 
the Christian faith. Robert Morrison failed 
to make converts because there was no founda- 
tion in the Chinese mind and life upon which 
he could build a faith in Jesus Christ. There 
was no atmosphere to sustain such a faith. The 
zeal that sent forth the flaming evangelists 
could be applied only according to the knowl- 
edge which experience readily and forcibly im- 
parted. 

The inclusive view of missions set the pro- 
grams of the masters in missionary enterprise. 
William Carey, Alexander Duff, and Adoni- 



134. MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ram Judson in India and Burmah; David Liv- 
ingstone, James Stewart, and Robert Moffatt 
in Africa; Robert Morrison, Hudson Taylor, 
W. A. P. Martin, Young J. Allen and Timo- 
thy Richards in China, G. F. Verbeck, C. M. 
Williams and the Lambuths in Japan, Cyrus 
Hamlin and the Blisses in the Levant, John G. 
Paton in the Fijis, Hiram Bingham in 
Hawaii, William Butler in Mexico, and Wil- 
liam Taylor in South America and Africa 
were reconstructionists of life and thought in 
those lands, and they left the nations with a 
bent toward Christian civilization and the 
Christian religion. The biographies of these 
modern apostles reveal such effectiveness of 
that mode of evangelization as to warrant its 
continuance. They went forth to preach 
Christ as a personal Savior to those who would 
accept him, and they lingered to proclaim the 
Kingdom of God as the medium through which 
Christ is to become the Savior of all men. The 
latter is not in contradiction to the former, but 
is inclusive of it and the conditions in which 
this primary truth may be realized. They left 
a world in awe before the possibilities of such 
a kingdom of God and in anticipation of a 
Messiah that shall bring salvation to all people. 
In the opinion of many superior Christian 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 135 

men of thought, insight and outlook, vision and 
comprehension, there is no greater barrier to- 
day to the world's becoming Christian than 
the distressing lack of human-mindedness in 
the Christian Church. Until this day a great 
body of very sincere and devout Christians 
have no thought or desire of making the world 
Christian. They are strongly antagonistic to 
the idea and actively opposed to any mission- 
ary program that has such as its objective. 
They are concerned only in the conversion of 
individuals in such quantities as to compel 
Jesus Christ to return to the earth and set up 
his authority, and by his might restore right. 
They boldly assert that the world is getting 
worse and worse and will continue until it be- 
comes utterly unbearable, when Jesus will 
come and usher in the millennium. Instead of 
endeavoring to make the world human, they 
rejoice as it is made inhuman. Instead of 
wanting peace they are hilarious over wars 
and rumors of war. They never were so con- 
fident and so assertive of their doctrines and 
so prophetic in their interpretations of the 
Scriptures and the times as when in the last 
decade Europe was drenched in blood and 
darkness lay upon the heart of the world. To 
them any effort to make the world human is 



136 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

folly and can end only in futility. They are 
certain that the world is not to be made Chris- 
tian and cannot be made Christian. They are 
literalists in interpretation and individualists 
in gospel thinking. They are extremists in 
individualism. Such persons, however sincere 
and devout, are unquestionably fearful bar- 
riers to the Christianization of the world and 
to any comprehensive program for lifting the 
level of human civilization. Whatever may 
be their interest in and fitness for the other 
world, they are wanting in the chief qualities 
of world citizenship in the Kingdom of God 
on earth. 

The beliefs and teachings of these extremists 
are based upon the theory that this world is in- 
herently bad and irredeemable, and that the 
only thing possible is the salvation out of its 
wreckage of as many souls as possible. The 
devil is now in charge and until he is chained 
for at least a thousand years by the imposition 
of an external divine authority and power, 
there can be no hope of this becoming a fit 
dwelling place for the sons of God. The sal- 
vation of the world, humanity, the entire race, 
by the spiritual processes which Jesus Christ 
introduced and now supports is hopeless and 
doomed to failure. Unless the first coming is 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 137 

succeeded by a second coming, in which the 
full power of God is demonstrably asserted for 
the control of the world, the human race can 
never be redeemed. Christianity is not con- 
ceived as a divine provision for making men 
human as well as making them divine. The 
aspiration to make the world Christian has be- 
hind it this double conception of the purpose 
and work of Christianity. But in order to 
make the world human or Christian, this phi- 
losophy of the world's inherent evil and this be- 
lief in the final failure of Christianity unless 
it is reenforced by a second physical appear- 
ance of the Son of God must be utterly re- 
pudiated. That Christianity can finally suc- 
ceed upon the strictly individualistic basis, 
with a complete unconcern in, if not bold an- 
tagonism to, the human program is indeed 
questionable, but Christianity on the basis laid 
in the Sermon on the Mount, in the parabolic 
and other teachings, the Samaritan incident 
and all that took place in the passion, death 
and resurrection of Jesus Christ has every 
prospect of final triumph in the earth. To 
this end the missionary propaganda is now be- 
ing vigorously conducted in the world. 

Those who lay emphasis on the ultimate tri- 
umph of the religion of Christ have come to 



138 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the view that the construction and stability of 
human society constitute the high and holy 
purpose at the very heart of Christianity. 
Christianity was never intended to produce 
angels, but men. Wherein men and angels 
agree or differ cannot be said, as there is no 
basis upon which to build an opinion. Revela- 
tion as received is concerned entirely with men 
and his salvation. Man has always insisted 
that the salvation brought by Jesus Christ was 
for his world and that alone. The revelation 
of the other life has been meager, but all the 
intimations in the Holy Scriptures lead to the 
view that it will be a human life. Unfortu- 
nately man has been so individualistic in his 
thinking and in his interests that he has gener- 
ally believed that salvation was meant only for 
himself in his particular personality. He has 
come slowly to human conceptions; that is, 
conceptions of humanity as a social body, as 
an entity, having value, force, movement, and 
destiny as has the individual. He has not 
always recognized that the salvation of hu- 
manity is the salvation of the human as well 
as the divine in man. Making the world 
human is not entirely a human process. It is, 
however, more and more being recognized as 
antecedent to and a constituent part of mak- 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 139 

ing the world Christian. The humanness in 
the life, thought, service and ideals of Chris- 
tianity's adherents and promoters is an enor- 
mous, if not a determinative, factor in bring- 
ing the peoples of the world to the acceptance 
of the religion of the INTazarene. 

There is a great company of noble, broad- 
minded people who believe that what the 
world needs is to think in terms of human- 
ity. They hold that if there were no Chris- 
tianity, no other world destiny for the race, 
human-mindedness would be a distinct and 
most meritorious achievement of mankind. 
Human-mindedness in the race, the established 
consciousness of the unity of humanity, the 
vivid sense of the kinship of all people, the 
realized obligation of every man to every man 
in the fellowship of the world, would be a 
magnificent accomplishment for mankind. 
The Christian Church has not in fact made 
this achievement a real dominant ideal and ob- 
jective in its labors. It has asserted its ex- 
ternal authority to accomplish a unity, but it 
has not promoted unity on the human basis. 
Protestantism has had much to say of the 
"elect" and the "predestined" and "decrees of 
damnation." These have not helped human- 
mindedness and they have had doubtful values 



140 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

for God-mindedness. The Church has stood 
for the common origin of the human family, 
but it has wavered in its support of the ideas 
of common life, common purpose, common in- 
terests and common destiny of humanity. 
Saving man for the kingdom of man as well 
as the Kingdom of God has not seemed quite 
as high an aim as saving man out of man's 
world to an angel world. Salvation has too 
often been regarded as a transportation rather 
than a transformation. Religion has not com- 
prehended within its domain the entire man 
and all his relations. 



in 

There are few things more distressing to 
the thoughtful men and women who are con- 
cerned for the development of human civiliza- 
tion than the tribal -mindedness of mankind. 
Tribalism has afflicted the world since the days 
of the patriarchs. As shown in the Bible his- 
tory and in all the records of the race it has 
developed and perpetuated a spirit of antag- 
onism and strife. It still exists and manifests 
itself in selfishness, dissension and deadly com- 
bat. The Great War was brought on by the 
tribal spirit and it has left in its trail a mon- 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 141 

strous amount of tribal hatred, which may, at 
some future critical time, wreak ruin upon the 
nations. Tribalism is the world's greatest 
enemy, and until it is conquered by a new 
world one-ness there will hang a pall over 
mankind. The clan spirit wills to rule and 
goes to any conceivable length to accomplish 
its purpose. It thinks only in terms of the 
clan, whatever its size or its habitation. It 
never fails to lift its emblazoned banner, "My 
clan first." Its interests are clan interests; its 
purposes are clan purposes; its sense of justice 
and right never fail to accord with its weal and 
aspirations. The clan spirit has prevailed in 
the world for forty centuries and to-day it 
interferes with the great movements for hu- 
manity. To be sure, the clans in many sec- 
tions have grown larger, and in some have 
come to be nations, but the temper of diplo- 
macy, of commerce, of social relations, carries 
an air of forcible domination too nearly similar 
to the clan spirit of the days of Julius Caesar, 
or even of the Judges. That there has been 
advancement is to be joyfully acknowledged, 
but the end to be desired is the disposition of 
good will, cooperation, and mutual considera- 
tion in all that pertains to human life and its 
relations, and this is not yet in view. 



142 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

The only complete corrective of the clan 
spirit, or tribalism, is human-mindedness. Its 
development has been a slow process notwith- 
standing the all but universally accepted be- 
lief in the common origin of all branches of the 
human family. The developments of recent 
decades have contributed extraordinarily to 
its production, whether these developments 
have been in the sphere of scientific discovery 
and invention, of philosophical theory and 
suggestions, commercial enlargement, diplo- 
matic treaties, philanthropic activities, or re- 
ligious instruction and service. There is to- 
day a certain world consciousness, world 
thought, world mind which has emerged in 
very recent years. That it will be submerged 
by other incoming tides is not probable, al- 
though its recently developed force may at 
times be held in abeyance. Its rise is not an 
ebullition, but rather the result of long years 
of Christian teaching and the impact of Chris- 
tian thought and spirit. Human-mindedness 
is an ideal toward which Christianity has ever 
impelled the world by the very nature of its 
controlling principles, and it is a goal worthy 
of the highest Christian effort. Humanity re- 
quires unity in order to its peace, happiness, 
and the enlarging pursuits of life. The spirit- 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 143 

ual bond is at this very moment the greatest 
need of this planet. Only by it can come hu- 
man salvation and the permanence of any 
worthy civilization. World consciousness is 
the first step in world redemption, and its de- 
velopment marks the progress of the Chris- 
tian religion in the consummation of its divine 
purpose. 

Christianity began with a sense of world re- 
sponsibility. Jesus of Nazareth was the first 
world citizen. There was not one before Him. 
His interests were world interests and His 
concern was for all humanity. He was not the 
nationalist or tribalist expected, with the pur- 
pose to make dominant one people in the midst 
of the nations. The Jehovah of the Hebrews 
had always been regarded as partial to them 
because he was their particular God. They 
delighted to call themselves the chosen people. 
The Messiah they sought was a Jewish mon- 
arch with powers unlimited for their own ag- 
grandizement. Jesus failed and disappointed 
them because of his broad horizons, his world 
sympathies, and his human comprehensiveness. 
They would not tolerate such conceptions. 
The Jews, even to this day, are tribalists, in- 
tensely racial, though residing in every nation. 
They did away with Jesus, but not before He 



144 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

had released the forces for a world redemp- 
tion. He made new orbits for the movements 
of creation. He opened new channels for the 
currents of history. He lifted humanity out 
of its tribal confines and set it in the open 
ways of universalism. He spent His days pro- 
claiming a Kingdom of God for the earth. He 
gave His life as the Savior of the world. He 
laid upon His friends and followers the man- 
date to "Go and make disciples of the na- 
tions." This was the beginning of the move- 
ment for world consciousness. 

World consciousness was never an attain- 
ment of the non-Christian peoples. When 
China was first visited by Robert Morrison, 
that pioneer of modern missionaries, a little 
more than a century ago, it was a sealed em- 
pire. The Chinese claimed an ancestry of 
divine origin. They knew no other shores 
than their own. Those who by chance found 
their way in from other lands could be, in 
their estimation, none other than foreign dev- 
ils. When Commodore Perry first entered 
Japan so late as 1853, he found a people of the 
same darkened seclusion. India was in no 
sense different. Its horrible caste system is 
the product of tribalism, self-sufficiency, and a 
religion of the most severely clannish type. 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 145 

Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Hindu- 
ism never developed any sense of world re- 
sponsibility. The non- Christian faiths have 
been narrow and selfish, producing peoples of 
like characteristics. No great explorers, no 
world conquerors, no constructors of racial 
destinies ever haled from lands of such re- 
ligious and intellectual conceptions. What- 
ever of world consciousness may be found 
among these people to-day has been brought 
in and developed with Christianity and the 
civilization which Christianity has fostered and 
energized. 

Christianity began under the inspiration of 
the world gospel, but in an atmosphere quite 
unfavorable to the consummation of its pro- 
gram. For centuries pagan ideals were dom- 
inant. Roman imperialism, Greek philosophy 
and Teutonic barbarity were in control of the 
early centuries of the Christian era, and these 
were supported and guided by pagan prin- 
ciples of life, thought, religion and morals. 
Christianity was restrained from giving ex- 
pression to its conceptions of world responsi- 
bility. It was forced in fear into narrow in- 
dividualistic molds and was held to the dis- 
cussion of the important but limited meta- 
physical dogmas of religious belief. Church 



146 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

councils were called and creeds were passed 
upon, but they were confined to the preexist- 
ence and the double nature of Jesus and the 
speculations as to the other world. The 
heresies that harassed the Church in that 
period and later involved largely the meta- 
physics of Christian theology, or the mechanics 
of the Christian organization. Hellenism was 
in no small way responsible for the one and 
Romanism for the other. Christ's world con- 
sciousness in such an era lost its significance 
and force. Europe and not Palestine gained 
the ascendency and has retained it through the 
centuries. 

With the decline of these world forces by 
which it had been bound, the Church ventured 
forth to assume the role which pagan imperial- 
ism in its ascendency had been playing. It not 
only constituted itself the mouthpiece of God 
on earth, but it arrogated to itself all the as- 
sumptions and claims of the emperor in his 
autocratic control of the world. It identified 
itself with the Kingdom of God. In it all the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy represented itself to be 
the Church. From that day, a millennium and 
more ago, world empire has been the ambition 
of the Roman Church. But imperialism is 
pagan in thought, purpose and action, and is 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 147 

no less so because it is ecclesiastical. The 
dream of world empire has been entertained 
by great conquerors, great statesmen and great 
nations, and especially by the Holy Roman 
Empire, but the dream has not been inspired 
by the sense of the brotherhood of man and 
the Fatherhood of God. Its source is always 
in the thirst for power, authority, domination 
and exploitation. Wherever ecclesiastical im- 
perialism has held sway, or to-day holds sway, 
there can be found the characteristic products 
of paganism, such as illiteracy, superstition, 
image worship, moral obliquity and oligarchi- 
cal government. The bane of the historic 
Christian Church has been its pagan aspiration 
for world empire. Human-mindedness, the 
true characteristic of apostolic Christianity, 
has been dissipated by the introduction of Ro- 
man paganism into the mind of the Church. 
World domination is the very opposite of all 
that world consciousness would develop and 
support. 

World control by the imposition of external 
authority is not a Christian conception, even 
though that control were exercised by heavenly 
ambassadors or the Lord Jesus Himself. A 
temporal kingdom on earth, set up and ruled 
by Jesus from a throne on the Mount of 



148 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Olives, would not meet the purposes of God as 
revealed in the Holy Scriptures. True Chris- 
tian humanity is a democracy. Monarchies 
and oligarchies are but stepping stones to that 
higher human social control which is at yet but 
an ideal. True democracy has not yet been 
attained. Democracy is dependent upon in- 
telligence and righteousness or wisdom and the 
controlling sense of right. Attempts at de- 
mocracy succeed or fail just in proportion as 
these two qualities prevail in the people. So 
long as the people have not the wisdom, the 
ability and the righteous motive and control 
for self-government, so long must they be gov- 
erned by others, for their good and the good of 
society. Imperialism has no penchant for the 
spread of intelligence and the production of 
the sense of righteousness, as these will inevi- 
tably mean its overthrow, whether it is the state 
or the Church. Education and the true Chris- 
tian religion blaze the way to democracy and 
make certain the undermining of autocracy. 
Democracy and human-mindedness are cor- 
relative terms. They lead to each other. They 
center the focus upon man, his worth, individ- 
ual and collective, irrespective of locality or 
conditions of life. He is not planned of the 
Almighty to be a slave, a subject, but a free- 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 149 

man, a citizen with all the sovereign right of 
any Son of God. 

The Christianity of Christ is an enemy of 
tribalism and imperialism, clannishness and 
provincialism. It expands horizons, lengthens 
visions, deepens soul yearnings and sets new- 
stars in the heavens. It projects man upon 
outstretching lines of thought. This was co- 
gently illustrated in the recent World War. 
Whence the guns that could deliver their pro- 
jectiles with much accuracy from a distance of 
twenty miles, and others that could shell a city 
with much damage seventy-five miles away? 
Whence those flocks of airplanes, those net- 
works of battlefield telephones, those deadly 
demons of the deep, those wireless devices for 
limitless communication? Whence this amaz- 
ing exhibition of force and efficiency in the 
modern war ? No less wonderful are the imple- 
ments of peace and the vast structural work of 
civilization. The modern man has come to be 
little less than a creator. But the non- Christian 
nations furnished nothing of their own dis- 
covery, invention and creation. The masterful 
man in it all came to his exalted supremacy in 
the atmosphere of Christianity. Some one 
will rise to say: "This is not due to the at- 
mosphere of Christianity, but to racial endow- 



150 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ment." He who champions such a thesis of 
the superiority of the Occidental brain over the 
Oriental undertakes a very large task. When 
lives from the beginning have been subject to 
the same stimuli, the incidents of birth have 
shown meager significance. It is well recog- 
nized that minds take character and strength 
from what passes through them. The non- 
Christian peoples have not had the world's 
truth to pass through their minds to equip 
them for that greater service to the world. 
Likewise from the peoples long dominated by 
an exacting ecclesiasticism, little of invention 
and production has come. Christianity is a re- 
ligion of freedom; without freedom its pinions 
are clipped; but with an open sky and a free 
spirit it bears man toward the goals of divine 
destiny. Not the Anglo-Saxon, not the Teu- 
ton, not the Celt, not the Latin, not the Slav 
makes the world sway under his power, but 
man brought to his full stature for service, 
whatever his race or region. 



IV 

Christianity has gone forth into the entire 
world in the missionary propaganda teaching 
the worth of man and instituting the agencies 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 151 

and activities that lift him to a new level and 
set before him new hopes of coming to full 
stature in the human family. Man has been 
taught that he can achieve mastery over the 
world in which he lives, and come to a destiny 
in the after life in keeping with his powers as 
a son of God. Emphasis everywhere has been 
put upon man's worth, his capabilities and his 
possibilities in a righteous environment and un- 
der a sympathetic divine power. Man's esti- 
mation of himself has been lifted and even ex- 
alted by a gospel that taught that God consid- 
ered him worthy of redemption and of co-part- 
nership with Himself in the construction and 
reconstruction of the world. He has been 
taught that Jesus came to save men, as Borden 
P. Bowne once said: "Not because they are 
so many, but because they are so dear." Re- 
ligion has been so presented as to awaken in 
man a sense of human importance in the esti- 
mation of God the Father. This emphasis has 
made all the more glaring the awfulness of 
man's sinning and sinfulness. In the response 
of the moral qualities in man to the moral 
qualities in God, the realization of man's soul 
unfitness has been made vivid and, as in the 
apostolic times, men have cried, "What must I 
do to be saved?" That conversion which is an 



152 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

organic reconstructing of the human spirit, a 
regeneration, has resulted from this new con- 
sciousness of man's worth and his responsibility 
to God and his fellow man because of his en- 
dowments, capabilities and powers. 

Only as a man sees his own worth does he 
begin to realize the worth of every other man. 
It is then that he finds all the world akin. Man 
is not ready for any very great service until he 
discovers that he is human and a member of 
the human family. Without this consciousness 
of human family relationship he is scarcely ca- 
pable of entertaining the high purpose for 
which human beings actually exist. Those 
who have no just conception of the race receive 
no call to recognize the kinship of the race. 
The reconciliation of man to man in the world 
currents comes only in recognition of man's 
permanent values and the essential unity of 
mankind. The humanizing of mankind is 
achieved by the double process of awakening 
man to his own worth and of setting up in the 
earth the unity of humanity. Getting man to 
himself and above the animal of him is a pri- 
mary achievement. Fangs and claws make 
great the tiger, but disgrace the man. The man 
of prey is a slur upon the species and a re- 
proach to his Maker. But man can never be 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 153 

lifted from the jungle until the jungle habit 
has been made despicable by an awakened con- 
sciousness of his own higher worth and nobler 
design. Animal instincts serve the animal in 
ascendency, but when man comes to self-ap- 
preciation and self-assertion the animal is 
cowed to subjection. No objective in Chris- 
tianity should stand out more boldly than this 
of humanizing mankind. To this labor the 
evangelical propagandists, through missionary 
operations, have been assiduously and intelli- 
gently devoted. The gratifying results of 
these difficult but Christ-like labors are to be 
found in all the world. 

The awakened consciousness of the back- 
ward races is a sublime testimony to this high 
altruism of vigorous Christianity. Civiliza- 
tion was thrust upon them and they are awak- 
ening to its value and desirability. To-day 
the wild men are scarce, whether in the United 
States, Mexico, South America or Central 
Africa. The mountain fastnesses of the Bal- 
kans and the Himalayas and the slopes and 
plains of Thibet and Central Asia have felt 
the pressure of the Christian missionary and 
yielded to his kindly hand. The gold hunter 
in the Americas and the slave trader in Africa 
made the white man a foreign devil; the mis- 



154 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

sionary in all the world has made him a mes- 
senger of light and hope. The horrors pre- 
scribed by the Belgian monarch for the Congo 
blacks cannot be repeated to-day. The servant 
of the Brother of man has been the friend to 
the backward races, and he has lifted the veil 
and pushed back the horizons for those who 
knew not the way of God and his sons in the 
earth. Non- Christian peoples have never 
made substantial contributions to the awaken- 
ing and uplifting of backward races, even 
when they dwelt at their door. But Brainerd 
and Robinson in America, Livingstone and 
Moffatt in Africa, Paton in the Fiji Islands 
and Bingham in the Hawaiian Islands have set 
beacons upon the hill tops of human well-be- 
ing, and backward tribes have fixed new 
courses for their movements and new goals for 
their existence. Such service comes from men 
who feel the urge of the Christian gospel. 

Currents have been set in the tides of men 
that make for human welfare. The effort is 
on to lift the level of human living and 
heighten the quality of human life. This can- 
not be done so long as disease stalks the earth, 
ignorance beclouds half of humanity, and pov- 
erty hangs a pall over unnumbered multitudes. 
These shall be stricken away by the processes 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 155 

already inaugurated and being carried for- 
ward. Herculean efforts are being put forth 
to destroy malaria, draw the fangs of typhoid 
fever, wipe out tuberculosis, and hold in check 
the ravaging diseases of all mankind. The an- 
nual reports of the Rockefeller Foundation 
will give a most illuminating account of the in- 
estimable service which is being rendered in the 
interest of world health. Yellow fever has 
now been confined to a very few seed-beds and 
the onslaught upon these is constant and ef- 
fective. The time is near when the very seed- 
germ of yellow fever will be destroyed and the 
race will be rid of that disease forever. Hook- 
worm disease prevails extensively in all warm 
climates. This great Foundation has its corps 
of hard working specialists in all countries la- 
boriously endeavoring to bring this disease un- 
der complete control through adequate treat- 
ment and sanitary precautions. Never have 
there been such campaigns against preventable 
and curable diseases. Public health in all 
countries and in all international associations 
is fast assuming primary importance. Medi- 
cal Colleges of the highest merit have been es- 
tablished in countries where the people have 
been unmindful of their value. Medical mis- 
sions that once were operated simply as means 



156 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

to evangelistic propaganda have now become 
great ends in themselves. The propagation of 
the gospel of health, physical strength and ca- 
pable bodily organisms has become a part of 
the program to make the world soundly hu- 
man and potentially Christian. Hospitals, 
nurses, dispensaries, orphanages and asylums 
are appearing in all the world. 

Whence all this? Who built or inspired 
these measures and means of world health and 
human welfare? The non-Christian peoples 
can but admit that they came from Christian 
sources. What the non-Christian world has 
to-day of medicine, the medical school, the 
hospital, its appliances and its agencies, is the 
product or result of the missionary's labor and 
influence. Christianity creates a philanthropy 
that not only gives relief to the occasional dis- 
tresses, but that also sets itself resolutely to 
reduce the conditions by which all distresses 
come. It inspires to remedial, yea, redemp- 
tive processes for the deliverance of humanity. 
Did not the Great Physician lead in this di- 
vinely human service? Whether it be Ar- 
menia's oppressions, China's famines, or Eu- 
rope's awful war curses, the Christian peoples 
of America readily and nobly respond. 
Whether it be the destruction of the foes of 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 157 

civilization or the construction of betterment 
agencies for the uplift of mankind, Christian , 
forces are ever at hand. Human welfare is 
first in human considerations. The representa- 
tives of the Christian community stand at the 
crossroads of the world to make glad the hearts 
of men. The instinct of brotherhood has found 
expression through the human-mindedness 
which Christianity has widely promoted. 

The same attitude which has been assumed 
toward the disease that destroys the body has 
been assumed to the diseases of societies. 
Poverty is now looked upon as a social disease 
and as having no place in a well-ordered world. 
It is not a necessity laid by nature upon man, 
but a condition of his own production. The 
world's poverty is largely of the world's mind 
and not of any lack in creation. It may be 
the outcome of a pernicious social and indus- 
trial adjustment. Whichever the cause, it and 
superstition can never be removed so long as 
ignorance reigns. Remove ignorance and both 
will go as the dews. China will have no more 
famines after it has learned to distribute prop- 
erly its own products. India's sixty millions 
who daily lay down hungry were fed as an in- 
telligent and adequate system of irrigation, 
constructed by a Christian power, brought its 



158 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

abundant waters to its expansive and fertile 
fields. Bombay's scourge of Bubonic plague 
will pass when the people cease to harbor rats 
and protect fleas. Ignorance is the world's 
greatest foe. Human welfare demands that 
ignorance and poverty, whether due to mental 
incompetency or industrial injustice, shall be 
brought to an end. Shall Christianity reserve 
all its forces and teachings, principles and 
ideals simply for the salvation of "lost souls," 
or shall it apply its full powers to the full task 
of saving humanity for this world and the next 
through the Spirit of Jesus Christ, Physician, 
Teacher and Redeemer? Is there any doubt 
as to which program will make the greater ap- 
peal to the race and so lift up Christ before the 
world that He may draw all men unto Him? 

Whatever else Christianity may have done, 
it has created the sense of human interest and 
has impelled its adherents to undertake the 
work of broadening the horizon of men and 
calling into the action the forces that dispel 
darkness of mind and gloom of spirit and that 
put the feeling of triumph into the life of 
the individual and the race. 

By nothing has the missionary propaganda 
contributed more largely to the solidarity of 
humanity than by its promotion of the fellow- 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 159 

ship of learning. It would be difficult to 
estimate the value and influence of such in- 
stitutions as Robert College on the Bosphorus, 
the American College at Beirut, the Ameri- 
can College at Cairo, the Christian universi- 
ties at Canton, Shanghai, Soochow, Nanking 
and Peking, the Doshisha University at 
Kyoto, and the Christian schools at Tokyo, 
Kobe and Hiroshima, the Christian colleges 
at Singapore, Calcutta, Lucknow, Bombay 
and Madras, and the Universities at Calcutta, 
Allahabad and other points under the direc- 
tion of the English Government in establish- 
ing human relations between peoples and 
building proper estimates of human values. 
Great radiating centers in these Christian in- 
stitutions are flashing rays of light into the 
darkened corners of the earth. "The people 
that walked in darkness have seen a great 
light ; they that dwell in the land of the shadow 
of death upon them hath the light shined." 
The modern world with its upheavals and en- 
tanglements, its conflicts and confusion, is an 
awakened world, though but rousing from its 
long deep sleep. It cannot return to its slum- 
ber with light streaming full into its face. The 
great intellectual awakening now manifest in 
the Far and Near East, resulting from the 



160 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

bold efforts of far-seeing Christian mis- 
sionaries has changed the old order. New 
leaders have arisen for the great political and 
economic, as well as educational movements 
of the Orient and the Levant, and they have 
their visions of the larger life through the 
tutorage of Christ-illumined men and women. 
The achievements in education in the non- 
Christian lands in a half century, in the estab- 
lishment of schools and school systems and the 
training of leaders, have been honorable to 
the human race and have shed unfading luster 
upon the Christian missionary. Only the sense 
of human worth, directed and enforced by 
human-mindedness in the ambassador of 
Christ, wxmld have contributed this matchless 
service to the world. 

"The measure of a man is the diameter of 
his horizon," is the statement of a sage. Ex- 
tend the horizon is the new order to Chris- 
tianity. Closed-in peoples, by whatever the 
conditions, physical, political, social or re- 
ligious, are marked by narrowness of mental 
perspective. Their convictions may be intense 
but their ideals are pinched. Their aspirations 
and purposes may be spiritualized by religion, 
but their tribal-mindedness becomes then only 
group-mindedness in religious relations. The 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 161 

Christian Church suffers as much to-day from 
group-mindedness as society does from tribal- 
mindedness. Selfishness characterizes this 
group-mindedness in its tenets of faith, its ben- 
efits of grace, its blessings of church organiza- 
tion and its rewards for the faithful unto death. 
Group success has been identified with Chris- 
tianity's success. The mission field has been 
victimized by all the group-mindedness which 
denominationalism could establish. Heresy 
charges and proselytism are common with the 
narrow representatives of narrow faiths, and 
group-mindedness has laid and is laying the 
foundations for future denominational clashes. 
The only cure for all this is a human-minded- 
ness with a horizon as wide as the race and 
a conception of life and salvation as compre- 
hensive as Christ's. It may be here gratefully 
acknowledged that the human-mindedness of 
the missionaries has had a most beneficent 
effect upon the group-mindedness of the de- 
nominations at home. The great missionaries 
are first to advocate cooperation by the 
churches and proclaim the gospel of human 
service. They have been fully convinced that 
group-mindedness is an impediment to Chris- 
tianity as much as tribal-mindedness is a check 
to the true development of humanity. Human 



162 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

welfare, human unity, human redemption, are 
great goals for the Christian Church in this 
new opening era of world reconstruction and 
Christianization and should be vigorously 
striven for by every devout servant of God 
who goes to the non-Christian and semi-Chris- 
tian peoples to be ambassadors of the true 
Christ. The sense of the human is to-day 
the greatest need of the world. The Chris- 
tian Church can never minister to the need 
until it becomes thoroughly possessed of this 
sense. It was this that lay at the heart of 
Jesus and made him the messenger of God 
to all the sons of men. 



"Thou shalt love thy fellow man as much as 
thyself." Jesus put large store by that. He 
put it second only to one other commandment : 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy 
whole heart, thy whole soul, thy whole mind." 
There is no use to talk of neighbors to men 
who have no God. They have none. It is 
because man has God whom he loves with all 
the powers of his being that he concerns him- 
self about the welfare of his neighbors. The 
first commandment epitomized personal re- 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 163 

ligion and the second the social gospel. The 
whole of religion is summed up in these two 
commandments, but by no means in either 
alone. Not even the half is in either, any- 
more than half of life is to be found in half 
a man. The Church has always made much 
of the first, and rightfully, but its neglect of 
the second has wrought havoc for humanity 
and delayed the coming of the Kingdom of 
God. There has been the rebound, the recoil 
to personal religion in these latter days, largely 
because it had not the support of the social 
religiousness which Jesus stressed. Commu- 
nity respect and friendship are the only com- 
petent medium and reliable support for the 
community life; and community life is not 
merely of the earth but of all worlds, where 
man with his instincts and endowments could 
find what he would call home. 

Nations are as much subject to the laws of 
society as individuals. The injunction to "love 
thy neighbor as thyself" was no mere personal 
regulation. It contains a great fundamental 
principle for mankind. Social regard, respect, 
cooperation and friendship are basic to social 
advancement and permanence. Nations are 
called by the highest exponent of the essential 
truth of human life to love one another. It 



164 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

is a pity to-day that France and Germany will 
have no regard for such a voice. It is a blot 
upon Europe that the Balkans have never been 
taught such a truth. What would this prin- 
ciple, strictly enforced, bring about in the 
Orient? The United States and Canada have 
more nearly lived up to this principle than 
any other two countries. There is a party in 
the United States that would apply this prin- 
ciple with Mexico, but there is another party 
that is too selfishly interested in Mexico's nat- 
ural deposits to be controlled by such an in- 
junction. The Monroe Doctrine has been for 
a century a declaration for self -protection ; 
now it has an open way to become a pronounce- 
ment for human brotherhood and a principle 
of international good will. The nations that 
do not regard each other should be made to 
do so with Christ's commandment to love their 
neighbors as themselves beating heavily upon 
their national consciousness and consciences. 
The fellow man has come above the horizon 
in these recent years. Nothing so stirred the 
world in all President Wilson's matchless ad- 
dresses, delivered with such inspired wisdom 
and vision, as his emphasis on human service, 
human liberty and human happiness. What 
a wealth of meaning was put into the word 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 165 

human, used collectively for mankind! There 
is to-day turmoil, strife, and bitter hatred in 
the world, such as seems could scarcely have 
been before. The weighty woes of war still 
curse the world, and the end is not yet. But 
in it all — yea, above it all — there is a plaintive 
murmur, a sad pleading of the human heart. 
Alfred Noyes in his poem, "The Dawn of 
Peace" gives voice to this stirring emotion: 

"The spirit that moved upon the deep 
Is moving on the minds of men; 
The nations feel it in their sleep, 
A Change has touched their dreams again. 

Voices confused and faint arise 
Troubling their hearts from East to West. 
A doubtful gleam is in their eyes, 
A gleam that will not let them rest." 

The great souls of whatever nation or people 
rebel at the forces that harass their brother 
man. There is a growing consciousness that 
this should not be but that in its stead should 
be a new brotherhood of the races. There is 
a heart hunger for a family life. Forces are 
multiplying and being mobilized to bring the 
members of the human family to a common 
hearthstone, to plight anew the troths of good 
will and mutual helpfulness. A family of na- 
tions, a community of nations, a fraternity 



166 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

of nations — that is the Christian conception 
and the ideal toward which mankind must 
move. Science and philosophy, with their ap- 
pliances and applications, have reduced the 
world to a bedlam and a continuous battlefield 
if that for which Christianity stands does not 
produce a brotherhood. The world neighbor- 
hood now in existence must be a scene of love- 
making and holy friendships or of feuds and 
deadly hate. Men can no longer dwell apart; 
can they be taught to live together? Shall 
they live as revengeful desperados, or as 
friendly neighbors, mutually respectful and 
helpful? 

The kingdom of God, which Jesus put first 
in all his speech, prayer and life, is not to be 
an aftermath of this world. It is the one end 
for which this earth exists, and will continue 
to exist. The Christian prophecy, written by 
the beloved disciple and apostle, is that the 
kingdoms of this world shall be under the sov- 
ereignty of God and that Christ shall reign 
in them forever. To that divine end all crea- 
tion moves. Nations that cannot be taught this 
supreme lesson of social life can come only to 
dispersion. The nations that can live together 
will, in the providence of God, supplant those 
that cannot. This is the logical teaching of 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 167 

Christianity and the well-founded expectation 
of its adherents. What effect will such con- 
victions, expressed in the heart councils of hu- 
manity, have upon the trend of world events? 
The league of nations is a Christian concep- 
tion. The master minds who first proposed 
it, those who have wrought upon it for decades, 
and those who finally produced a tangible form 
for its operation, were Christian. The high 
idealism, which is as essential to its ongoing 
as to its formulation, is possible only from 
a Christian source. This missionary propa- 
ganda can have no more far-reaching objective 
than just this of establishing a real league of 
humanity through which the nations may set 
up a brotherhood of the race and forge that 
spiritual bond that is so requisite to the perma- 
nence of world peace. 

Any covenant of peoples must carry force 
in order to its fulfillment. But military alli- 
ance is not the first thing in such a league. 
It is good will that the world needs. "Peace 
on earth for men of good will." Good will 
can eventuate only in good service. What 
an association of nations can do for the peo- 
ples, and not what it protects them from, will 
in the end determine the value of such a bond. 
Altruism is the antidote of national as well 



168 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

as personal selfishness, and the cure of malig- 
nant vindictiveness. The force that completely 
disarms a vicious foe is friendship, respect, 
love. Such a disarmament the nations will 
eventually come to make. A military alliance 
of forty or fifty nations to delay war between 
two ugly-tempered peoples may have value, 
but it is the least value of a genuine league of 
nations. The war on war should be, and can 
be, successfully carried on, but the weapons 
in the conflict must be other than enginery 
of the battlefield. The force that will put an 
end to war is moral and spiritual, not physical 
and carnal. Militarism must go with war. 
Human power is called upon to assume better 
forms and devote itself to higher ends than 
any that militarism may devise. 

The worldly-wise man is saying: "That is all 
very well, but it takes more than that to tame 
this wild world." Better say, "It will take 
as much as that." Disarmament, international 
police, an international court and an interna- 
tional parliament are essentials, but they can- 
not give strength and perpetuity to a league 
of nations. There must be international labor, 
international currency which cannot be set 
aside by the fickleness of exchange, interna- 
tional fixing of prices for the commodities of 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS; 169 

human living, international principles of com- 
merce and transportation, international stand- 
ards of education and means for its acquisi- 
tion, international helpfulness in providing for 
the home, the happiness and development of 
mankind. The league of nations must he a 
covenant of man to love, honor and serve his 
fellow man. The irreligious man says to all 
this, "Impossible"; the non-Christian man 
says, "Undesirable." The Christian man of 
America cherishes such an ideal and says: 
"Why should we be afraid of responsibilities 
which we are qualified to sustain, and which 
the whole of our history has constituted a 
promise to the world we would sustain?" The 
brotherhood of man is not only a Christian 
doctrine, but also a Christian ideal. It is fast 
being burned into the consciousness of man- 
kind as the sublime hope of human redemption 
and human perpetuity. In this far-reaching 
work the missionary is a pioneer and leader. 
Human-mindedness culminates in bonds of fel- 
lowship, kinship and permanent peace. 



VI 

The Christian missionary of the evangelical 
faiths has been the path breaker in the Orient 



170 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

for the common understanding of man. He 
has been the interpreter of one race to another, 
and has removed in literally thousands of cases 
the menacing misunderstandings, and has ce- 
mented bonds of good will between the nations. 
The Japan Mail once said: "No single per- 
son has done as much as the missionary to bring 
foreigners and Japanese into close inter- 
course." The same might be said of China 
and Korea. The Near East has felt this same 
bond between the Americans and its own peo- 
ple. The twenty-five thousand missionaries 
scattered throughout the world, giving their 
lives to some foreign people, are invisible 
bonds among the nations which become more 
and more firm with the accumulating years. 
They are the shock absorbers in the interna- 
tional collisions and ward off the evil of heated 
conflict. They proclaim and practice the prin- 
ciples of human brotherhood as fundamental 
in Christian doctrine, and they demand human 
consideration for all people. The golden rule 
has been written by them and the Christian 
statesmen into the international law of the 
world. Their contributions to world peace 
make all mankind their debtor. They have 
won the high esteem and complete confidence 
of the nations to which they have gone and 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 171 

have become the most reliable and capable 
servants of their own nations in the foreign 
lands. 

The missionary has been a diplomat and the 
diplomats' aid wherever he has been sent. 
When Caleb Cushing conducted the first dip- 
lomatic negotiations with China, 'two mission- 
aries were his interpreters. The Hon. John 
W. Foster, a long-time resident of China, 
bears testimony, "Up to the middle of the last 
century Christian missionaries were an abso- 
lute necessity in diplomatic circles. " The mis- 
sionaries have not only served their own gov- 
ernments, but the governments under which 
they labored. Robert Morrison was for 
twenty-five years the adviser of the British 
Government at Canton. Verbeck had so much 
to do with the reconstruction of the system 
of government in Japan that he is called the 
Father of the constitution of Japan. Dr. W. 
A. P. Martin was for almost a quarter of a 
century a most influential adviser at Peking. 
In the non-Christian world the evangelical 
missionary has been a most valuable diplomatic 
aid and has been in reality an astute diplomat 
for his own country and the country to which 
he was unselfishly giving his life. The Roman 
Catholic priest is always the politician and has 



172 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

an eye out for the main chance of temporal 
power. He became persona non grata to the 
Japanese and to the Chinese as well. But the 
evangelical missionary still holds his influence 
for good will among the nations and renders 
high service in creating and maintaining a sym- 
pathetic understanding among the nations. 

What is it that the missionaries have not 
done to promote human-mindedness, human 
welfare, human intelligence, universal peace, 
international good will and the brotherhood of 
the race? What other group of world workers 
has done so much? All the armies and all the 
navies of the world have scarcely reached the 
half. The greatest force for bringing about 
a real league of nations, a genuine peace cov- 
enant of mankind, lies not in the chancellories 
of Europe, Asia and America, but with that 
consecrated company of Christian missionaries 
who labor incessantly and untiringly, with faith 
in God and man, in the heart centers of the 
race. Put at the cross roads of Europe such 
a company as now labor in the rest of the 
world and they will draw the fires of hate, 
light the lamps of love, and set the nations 
to singing the Hallelujah Chorus. The mis- 
sionary has the palladium for the world's peace 
as he has the divine provision for the world's 



CREATING HUMAN-MINDEDNESS 173 

salvation. As he makes vocal the gospel of 
redemption, he makes vital the gospel of peace. 
The sweep of the Christ he proclaims thrills 
the world with hope, and invites to action the 
best energies of the race for the achievement 
of its noblest aspirations. Light, health, peace 
and good will follow in his train. The world 
will swing out into day and take the course 
of heaven as it comes to know the Nazarene 
and feel the force of His hand of love. To 
make Him known is God's supreme command 
to the sons of men. 



LECTURE IV: ELEVATING SOCIAL 
VALUES 



A very ancient writer reports that the Lord 
God said, "It is not good that man should be 
alone." That is the statement of an immuta- 
ble principle, whatever the particular applica- 
tion intended. This is just as true of groups 
as of individuals. Men who live apart live 
poorly and partially. They fail to get their 
counterparts in other individuals or sections 
of the race. In this aloneness they develop 
the sense of self-sufficiency and become blind 
to their gross deficiencies. This is true even 
of ascetic monastic saints. The idiosyncrasies 
of racial groups developed in their physical 
and mental solitariness are to-day the out- 
standing barriers to world cooperation and 
human brotherhood. One cannot read the 
early historical portions of the Old Testament 
without being horrified by the ferocious bru- 
tality of the tribes in their dealings with each 
other. Notwithstanding their common origin, 
the separation for generations developed the 

174 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 175 

sense of otherness and therefore hostility. 
Nothing is more remarkable and really amaz- 
ing about the history of mankind than the 
seemingly set purpose to maintain his alone- 
ness, aloofness, suspicion and enmity. The 
treaties on record in Europe covering a thou- 
sand years are glowing testimonials to the un- 
tiring efforts of nations to keep people in a 
state of separateness and rancorous animosity. 
Only once have nations thought in terms of 
humanity, and then instant fear fell upon 
them and they rushed back into their barbaric 
selfishness. They lacked the support of a 
new human consciousness which is possible 
only through the Christian conception of man 
and society. They fell from the high ideal 
of a covenant of humanity to the old fang 
and claw alliance of powers. The lion and 
the tiger may cower in the lair and bring quiet 
for a time, but trouble will be ever in the 
brewing. There is no hope of a new state 
of life until there is a new conception of social 
values, social possibilities and social responsi- 
bilities. 

Society has been thrust upon mankind and 
there is no escape. Space is gone and time is 
vanishing. There can be no hermits of nations 
or peoples. The daily happenings of the world 



176 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

are within the range of common knowledge, 
and the thoughts of all are a common heritage. 
Man cannot get away from society. He is 
compelled to be a social being. His individual- 
ism served him well in the days of his soli- 
tariness, but he has lost his solitariness. He 
may complain about it as the American In- 
dian who longs for the wilds of his forefathers, 
but there are no more wilds and there are never 
to be any more wilds. The world is not going 
back to the aboriginal state to please the be- 
lated aborigines. The Indian must become a 
citizen or a nuisance. The same is true of 
every other man in the world. Steam and 
electricity, discovery and invention, science and 
philosophy have made this planet into a neigh- 
borhood and there is no escape from society. 
The barriers between peoples henceforth must 
be of their own invention and construction. 
The question very naturally arises, what shall 
be the character of the new neighborhood life 
in the world ? Is Christianity interested or in- 
volved in the production and preservation of 
the proper social state, conditions and rela- 
tions? Is there a religious basis for society 
which Christianity should seek to establish and 
maintain? Before attempting to answer these 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 177 

questions it will be well to examine the state 
of society of to-day. 

All Europe reeks with the rottenness of 
social conditions. This is true from the Med- 
iterranean to the North Sea, and from the 
Bay of Biscay to the Ural Mountains. The 
political, industrial and social situations are 
marked by alarming unrest and constantly 
threatened by increasing revolution. This 
should occasion no surprise when it is realized 
that the entire basis of present day society 
is loathsomely materialistic. This is evidenced 
by the report of the Peace Conference at Ver- 
sailles, of the supreme council in its various 
meetings, and in the social and political move- 
ment and upheaval in Western Europe. The 
chancellories of the world were never more 
overwhelmed by materialism than in this post- 
war period. Greed, vantage ground, personal 
and national gain seem ever the ascendant ob- 
jectives. It might be said of the world as it 
was said of England in the early part of the 
eighteenth century, "It is no time to regard 
men as living souls; they must be thought of 
rather as tools, as workmen, as producers of 
wealth, the builders of industry, and the cap- 
tains of soldiers of fortune. Men must talk 



178 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

of fiscal problems, of the law of commerce, of 
raw materials and the processes of manufac- 
ture, of the facilitation of exchange. Politics 
center in the budget, and the freedom men 
think of is rather the freedom of the market 
than the freedom of the hustings or of the 
voting booth." Society has lost its sense of 
spiritual values and has fallen to the low level 
of physical and temporal expediency. Ma- 
terialism has usurped the rule over the nations 
and humanity has become enslaved to the 
grosser conceptions of life. The heart grows 
sick as it contemplates the state of the social 
mind in the very home of modern civilization 
from which go out the major influences that 
are determinative if not dominant in all the 
world. 

The plague spot of humanity to-day is in 
the heart of Europe. Militarism could be 
stricken from the earth if Europe would con- 
sent. The defeat of Germany in its mad de- 
signs of military world domination has in no 
way reduced the prestige of the military par- 
ties at the courts of the major powers. The 
Orient is learning war of Europe. The Amer- 
icans are kept armed against the possibility of 
an European imbroglio. The war to end 
war cannot be successfully conducted by the 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 179 

sword; it must be by reason and good will 
operating in the minds and consciousness of 
the European peoples. Little less than the 
calamity of militarism is the plague of political 
vagaries developed in recent decades, that 
moves like a cloud of poisonous gas upon the 
entrenched supporters of stalwart civilization. 
Marxism, Nihilism and Bolshevism in their ex- 
treme forms have cursed the peoples amidst 
whom they arose, and they have given off the 
various phases of socialism and communism 
which have been the outstanding insinuating 
foes to industry, economy and stable social 
life in England and America. The propagan- 
dists of industrial unrest and political upheaval 
have been the migrating sons of these plague- 
stricken centers of Europe, in which morals 
have been discounted and from which religion 
has been excluded. For the last quarter of a 
century the immigrant tide from Europe to 
America, north and south, has carried an in- 
fluence that is preponderantly materialistic, 
agnostic and even anti-religious. The forces 
that Europe has given off to the nations in 
these later years have been wanting in that 
fine spirit, those splendid purposes and high 
ideals which characterized the early colonists 
in the American Republic. Europe has lost 



180 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

its power to transfuse health-giving blood to 
the world's humanity. 

Europe will never become better, but only 
worse, until its ideals of society and its prin- 
ciples of social relations shall be radically 
transformed. The heavy hand of the past 
stays progress. The heritage of the nursery 
days of civilization has hindered the produc- 
tion hy matured society of the larger facilities 
for the broadened responsibilities. Childhood 
things have not been put away as man's era 
has come on. The disgusting if not exasper- 
ating flummery of pretentious aristocracy is 
an irritation to broad-minded, purposeful men 
and women who seek to establish a real broth- 
erhood of mankind. Much of the untoward in 
European life to-day is directly traceable to 
the rebellion of thoughtful persons against the 
inequalities which so-called aristocracy strives 
to maintain. These remnants of feudalism and 
tribal civilization are out of date, and a vig- 
orous application of modern political and so- 
cial science would put them out of existence. 
The real trouble is, the spiritual sources of 
society have been clogged and the out-going 
currents have not been sufficiently strong and 
of adequate volume to flush the broadened 
channels which the larger life requires. Social 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 181 

stagnation has brought on social disease and 
these will continue until the streams of spirit- 
ual influence shall fill the ways of society with 
cleansing virtues and the renovating forces of 
new conceptions and vitalizing ideals. For 
half a century religion in continental Euro- 
peans has been at a low ebb. The desecration 
of the Christian Sabbath by the masses has 
been flagrant. The worship of the sanctuary 
and the devout study of the Word of God 
have been willfully neglected by the intel- 
lectual and political leaders of the nations. 
Almighty God has had no hearing at the courts 
in the formation of plans and the inaugura- 
tion of movements that have set destiny to 
mankind. Christ's Christianity has had little 
voice and less application. There is little won- 
der that society grovels and humanity moves 
in uncertainty and fear. Yet the Christian 
Church has not ceased its functions as they 
related to the observance of ordinances and 
ceremonies and the administration of its in- 
structions and comforts to the occasional in- 
dividuals. But in dealing with life and society 
it has revealed a withered hand from which 
all power had departed. The sinews of a vig- 
orous, forceful faith no longer held man to 
God or man to man. How different from the 



182 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

formative days of Israel when the spokesman 
for the nation and the civilization from which 
Christianity came cried aloud and spared not. 
They had a vivid sense of Israel as a living 
being that was responsible to Almighty God, 
its chief ruler, and to the people whom God 
had chosen. Whatever might be the destiny 
of the individual, the nation was to endure for- 
ever. Continental Europe has had no proph- 
ets; only priests. "Like people, like priests," 
was Hosea's characterization of his times. 
Like people, like church, has been true of Eu- 
rope for a century. Romanism has been 
marked by political machination, feudalistic 
ecclesiastical conceptions, tyranny of authority 
and neglect of the minds and living conditions 
of the people. It has produced no social re- 
formers. Protestantism has been consumed 
with its metaphysical dogmatizing over doc- 
trines, theological hair-splitting and the spec- 
ulations in textual and historical criticism, and 
has had no time or thought for the Christiani- 
zation of the minds, souls and social relations 
of the people. Genuine, practical, apostolic 
Christianity has not had a real chance at con- 
tinental Europe in fifty years. Its neglect 
has brought havoc to mankind, unleashed the 
ravishers of civilization, and left the world 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 183 

at the peril of forces of materialism, agnosti- 
cism and blind self-interest. Europe is awak- 
ening to the necessity of the revival of re- 
ligion. 

What shall be the character of the religion 
which Europe and the world are to receive? 
The conviction has gained currency that God's 
purpose in Jesus Christ was fundamentally 
social while elementally individual. Through 
the salvation of individuals, social beings and 
citizens were to be created and developed. 
The unredeemed man is not qualified for the 
citizenship which is required for God's king- 
dom. Man, of himself, is worthy of redemp- 
tion, but the broader purposes of the redemp- 
tion are social. In this way only God's eternal 
purposes can be consummated and His crea- 
tive energies have full play. The Church has 
always held the conception of a purified and 
glorified Society, but for another world. It 
has not really made the creation and establish- 
ment of such a society on earth its chief and 
comprehensive objective. It has really never 
taken seriously the obligation or the possibility 
of such a consummation. Its entire system 
of thought, activity, and inducements has had 
to do with the after-life and the after-place. 
There has come a rude awakening, by a shock, 



184 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

to the awful fact that social values of this 
earth must have a new appraisement, that so- 
cial life must be quickened from above, and 
that social ideals must hereafter be set blaz- 
ing in the sanctuary of God. The withered 
hand is to-day the church's shame and humil- 
iation. The Lord in this hour commands, 
"Stretch forth thy hand." Healing will come 
as that hand is placed under the burdens of 
the weary world. Christianity will become 
commanding as it becomes redemptive of the 
entire domain of human life. This truth the 
living Church must make vital in its service 
to the world. 

ii 

The Christian Church has become vividly 
conscious of being face to face with a status 
of social conditions vastly different from any 
that it has ever hitherto confronted. That a 
social revolution is on cannot be gainsaid. 
Whether the Great War was the occasion of 
its being projected upon the world, or whether 
the War was itself a feature of the revolution, 
history must yet determine. Students of so- 
ciety judge revolutions by movements and not 
by cataclysms, and their verdicts may be with- 
held until more of the evidence is in. The 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 185 

late Benjamin Kidd in his "Science of Power,'' 
says that if the age preceding the War could 
be seen as the historian could see it we 
"should see this war of the nations to be no 
more than an incident in a universal movement, 
involving every form of thought and activity 
in the West, gradually rising to a climax 
throughout the world." It was his view that 
we are in the opening stages of a "revolution 
the like of which has never been experienced in 
history." To be sure, his chief reference is 
to the industrial or material value feature of 
the revolution, but the fabric of society is such 
that if the industrial feature is radically af- 
fected, all society will inevitably be trans- 
formed. The forces that operate in the world 
are really general, and the philosophy of soci- 
ety is a unit. There are few disturbances that 
are now truly local. World mobilization has 
been practically achieved and currents that af- 
fect the parts will eventually move the whole. 
The Church itself is not secure from change 
when all the rest of the world is being trans- 
formed. Revolution, such as here indicated, 
will stir all social conditions and affect all so- 
cial values. 

The recent war began with great display 
of military forces but ended with a remarka- 



186 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ble demonstration of socialistic organization 
and propagation. For a period of several 
months the masters of the armies were in 
deadly fear of the socialistic spirit. The uni- 
versal conscription that made the armies has 
become the method of labor organization. The 
power to command no longer rests with the 
State or Government. In every country the 
recruiting of the social industrial army has 
gone on, making ready for the day when its 
demands upon the world shall be irresistible. 
The state of war in the economic realm is not 
so spectacular as in the military struggle, but 
that it exists and is determined and deadly 
is common knowledge. The entire system of 
modern capitalism is arraigned by labor be- 
fore public opinion as vicious, anti-social and 
fundamentally unjust. On the other hand, the 
entire program of labor is arraigned by capital 
as malicious, dictatorial and despotic. Each 
party is strengthening itself daily for the ti- 
tanic struggle. Wealth has never been so 
thoroughly mobilized and labor never so 
strongly organized. Each is depending upon 
its force to win in the end whatever may be 
the cost to its opponent and the public. This 
is not a local community contest, nor of one 
nation. It is a world contest so far as wealth 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 187 

and labor have been able to organize the world ; 
and the day is rapidly approaching when it 
will indeed be a world contest. It is yet to 
be determined whether or not militarism will 
pale into insignificance as a foe to humanity 
in comparison with industrialism or capitalism 
or economic tyranny. 

Has Christianity anything to do with this 
contest ? Has it no concern in this the greatest 
struggle into which humanity has been and 
is being constantly thrust? Christianity has 
never proclaimed nor sustained a doctrine of 
force. Christ never said by the fruits of 
wealth, armies and power shall he "be known 
and his kingdom prevail. The fighting man 
never received any endorsement from the Naz- 
arene in the display of his ability to destroy 
his opponent. Nietzsche in his "Will to 
Power" declared that society would eventually 
in its demand for the rule of might, throw 
over utterly all that Jesus taught. Nietzsche 
and Treitschke were accredited during the war 
with being the instructors of Germany in the 
philosophy of force and domination. Has their 
philosophy gone down with the German eagle 
or has it beco"me dominant in larger realms? 
The very principles at the basis of Christianity 
are at stake in the industrial or economic strug- 



188 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

gle that is now on. It is not a partisan of 
either side in this conflict, but an antagonist 
to the philosophy and methods of procedure 
of both parties. Christianity is, however, no 
mere spectator. It is a greatly involved party. 
It does not win if either loses. It loses if 
the final battle is fought. Humanity is Chris- 
tianity's ward and its protection and exaltation 
are its real concern. The question that is up- 
permost in the mind of humanity is, has Chris- 
tianity the spiritual power, the commanding 
intelligence and the convincing processes of 
reasoning to reconcile these great social forces 
and coordinate them for the uplift of the world 
and the sanctification of mankind ? This ques- 
tion answered in the affirmative will put Chris- 
tianity in power as the peacemaker of the 
world. 

There is a zone between these two great 
massive forces over which Christianity should 
be able to sit supreme. It is the realm of 
justice, moral purpose, and good will. In the 
matter of justice three parties are involved: 
capital, labor, the public. Neglect either and 
justice fails. The way of justice may be a 
bit difficult to find because of the intricacies 
of the issues and the limitations of the finding 
intelligence, but the spirit of justice need never 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 189 

be absent. This Christianity will always sup- 
ply. In the matter of moral purpose, all ways 
are parallel, and reconciliation will be found 
only a station ahead if Christianity could put 
capital and labor on these tracks. What is 
the moral purpose of capital and labor to-day? 
Are they marked by moral integrity and char- 
acterized by moral earnestness? Broken 
agreements, "scraps of paper," and economic 
intrigues are never charged against men whose 
moral integrity is unquestioned and whose 
moral earnestness is written large in human 
endeavor. In the matter of good will the 
three parties can always rind a common plane 
of explanation, discussion and adjustment if 
the Golden Rule shall be the guiding principle 
in all deliberations and final conclusions. 
Christianity asserts that social values must not 
be imperiled by unmoral procedure and im- 
moral contentions. The basis of settlement 
in every human contest is in the human values 
which Jesus Christ exalted as being of more 
worth than the gain of "the whole world." 
The voice of the Galilean who stilled the tur- 
bulent sea should be sounded over the surging 
billows of industrial and economic life. Jesus, 
the Carpenter, is now needed at the arbitra- 
tion conferences of the world. 



190 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Heathenism is the provocation that sends 
Christianity to foreign lands. But heathendom 
is not a place but a state of mind and life. 
Define heathenism as one may and the pres- 
ent industrial state in the supposedly civilized 
world cannot escape being classed as little 
short of heathenish, and the full development 
is yet ahead. The only way of deliverance 
from the fearful disaster that the conflict 
is bringing upon the world is the elevation 
of social values to their true position 
by the vigorous and burning proclamation 
of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Industrial 
justice there must be. Respect for economic 
worth must never be lost. Capital and 
labor are mighty forces but they are not 
ends in themselves. Society is the supreme 
end of all operating powers. The two great 
forces are suffering to-day from the lack of 
a true perspective, a worthy goal, a supreme 
objective in the use of their powers. These 
only a virile, thorough-going, masterful 
gospel will set in bold relief. This is no 
time for shrinking timidity, cringing fear, and 
apologetic speech. The gospel that is the 
power of God unto the salvation of society in 
the present state is what is needed in every 
public place and hidden nook on this earth. 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 191 

It is absurd to speak of making the world 
Christian with the state of the industrial mind 
as it is. It is playing with destiny to shout 
curses upon the childish aberrations of the 
thoughtless and keep silent in the presence of 
the prodigious willful sinners against the high- 
est interests of society. The Kingdom of God 
can come only as society shall own the sov- 
ereignty of the Almighty. 

The gospel that lifts capital and labor to 
a new moral level is the gospel that will recon- 
cile their differences and direct their powers 
to the consummation of the purposeful ends 
of society. The piratical acquisition of wealth, 
whether on some Treasure Island, or wrecked 
shipping, or from some land of the Incas, or 
from foreign gold mines or oil fields, or from 
some bold exploitation of common society, will 
leave about that wealth something of the 
pirate's spirit. The pirate should now be re- 
placed by the producer. Men must be taught 
the fine distinction between the production of 
wealth and its acquisition. They need to learn 
the difference between the exhaustion of nat- 
ural resources and their development. There 
must be found and recognized the divide be- 
tween an accumulation which enriches and that 
which exhausts man's abode. The world is 



192 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

not the possession of this generation and no 
man has the moral right to impoverish pos- 
terity to satiate his whims for an hour. The 
individual must learn just how far his owner- 
ship extends and recognize the limits to his 
rights in what he seems to possess. There is 
a wealth which civilization may acquire 
through the possessions of men, and this he- 
comes the heritage of the race. Christianity 
has no more important responsibility than this 
of making the proper appraisement of ma- 
terial wealth, putting in bold outline the mean- 
ing and purpose of earthly possessions, and 
clearly indicating the manner in which such 
wealth is to be used in the establishment and 
furtherance of the Kingdom of God. The 
gospel of wealth is a gospel of power, as it 
puts the sinews of effectiveness into the pur- 
poses of righteousness and brings the world 
of resources under the sovereignty of the Lord 
of heaven. 

The power and prestige of wealth have 
awakened the ancient realms to a new thirst 
for its possession. The magic word in all 
languages is "business." Commercial prowess 
has assumed first place in the ambition of the 
nations. The wealth of the world, at the open- 
ing of the Great War, was increasing at a 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 193 

prodigious rate, and since the war every plan 
has been constructed for amassing anew great 
national fortunes. The gospel for an age of 
prosperity has again become more needful than 
the gospel for a period of adversity and sor- 
rows. Already the loss of life in the war, 
reaching into great millions, has become sec- 
ond in thought to the loss of wealth. In fact, 
the loss of life has itself come to be estimated 
in the loss of wealth which it entails. Money 
madness is the malignant malady of this gen- 
eration irrespective of locality or nationality. 
"Is there no balm in Gilead: is there no physi- 
cian there f The love of money has indeed 
become the root of all the world's evil. Has 
Christianity the power to make the use of 
money the source and agent of the world's 
highest good! Only the Christian principles 
of stewardship will save humanity with its ac- 
cumulated wealth and stored-up energy from 
final destruction. Christianity only can put 
social value upon human wealth. Selfish ac- 
cumulators and even selfish producers will 
never rind the social purpose of all possessions. 
Social purpose is moral at its basis and has 
the social good as its end. Wealth in its 
finality is a social value and not individual. 
It will be elevated to its true sphere only as 



194 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

it takes on moral significance and is supported 
by moral motives. This will come only as 
religion controls the centers of human power 
and directs the endeavors of human spirits. 



in 

Trade is primarily a social act, as through 
it is accomplished that exchange of commodi- 
ties which is indispensable to the sustenance 
of the life of humanity in all parts of the 
world. It is socially based upon the funda- 
mental virtues of honesty, faith in the fellow 
man, and conscientious regard for the needs 
of the race. Local barter of man with man 
may be a matter of wits and keenness in driv- 
ing a bargain, but the great trade of the world 
must be pitched upon the plane of confidence, 
straightforward dealing, and unquestionable 
reliability. Traders in a Syrian bazaar in the 
city of Damascus enjoy the mental gymnas- 
tics involved in their scales of askings and tak- 
ings. The sellers and the buyers in Benares 
on the Ganges, in Cairo on the Nile, or in 
modern Jerusalem, seem to the Christian 
trader utterly void of conscience in the matter 
of trade. The' Japanese, in the opening days 
of his international commercial career, non- 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 195 

plused the commercial world by his utter un- 
reliability in abiding by a trade when the 
tide went against him. He soon found, 
however, that there were substantial principles 
which must be observed if he were to continue 
in the markets. JsTothing was more interesting 
to me than to find in Kobe, thirteen years ago, 
a Christian American lecturing in English to 
a class of three hundred students in a school 
of commerce on the moral principles of busi- 
ness. The unreliability of the Japanese in 
abiding by a commercial contract gave rise 
to an unfounded and false statement that has 
had great currency, that even in their own 
banks the Japanese were so unreliable that 
foreigners had to be employed to handle 
the money. The Japanese has learned 
this lesson of the nations as he has learned 
many others, and is to-day a splendid business 
man. 

The Chinese have been a trading people 
through the centuries. They were the world's 
first bankers. Their commercial organizations 
are the most complete of any on earth. They 
compelled honesty by the penalty of commer- 
cial ostracism which would mean economic 
ruin. Integrity was not a moral virtue but 
a business necessity. The Jew for many cen- 



196 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

turies has been a trader, but in the recent eras 
he has not commanded the big markets. His 
principles of dealing are known to be largely 
of the oriental type, although relations to world 
trade have stabilized in large measure his 
methods. The characteristics of trade vary 
with the character of the business that is be- 
ing done. 

American trade has the reputation of being 
honest, reliable and serviceable. The Ameri- 
can article is usually taken anywhere in the 
world at what is claimed for it by the seller. 
The American business man has been looked 
upon as straightforward, conscientious and 
trustworthy. He is direct in his methods and 
outspoken in his dealings. However, this must 
be said; during the war and the immediate 
post-war period this good reputation has suf- 
fered at the hands of American business men 
who were lamentably lacking in the American 
character and principles. Many of these were 
not of Christian birth or training, and many 
spoke the English language with a strong for- 
eign accent. Substitutions were common and 
cancellations were frequent. Perhaps never 
in the last fifty years of American business, 
even in the United States, has there been such 
an exhibition of moral obliquity in trade as 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 197 

in the last two years. South America, though 
outrageously guilty in its own name, has been 
amazed by this deterioration of the American 
moral character in business. To be sure this 
is a fleeting irregularity, but its moral effect 
is most injurious and cannot be immediately 
eradicated. But it has thoroughly demon- 
strated the utter necessity of moral integrity 
in business if commerce is to be carried on in 
world proportions and by world facilities. The 
truth, and nothing but the truth, without ex- 
aggerations or embellishments, must charac- 
terize all representations of goods. The falsi- 
fier in advertising or representing his wares 
is a thief in ambush and should be subject to 
prosecution for attempted felony. The trader 
who in foreign commerce maliciously substi- 
tutes one article for another to the hurt of 
his customer is an offender against two na- 
tions and should be subject to prosecution 
under international law through proper diplo- 
matic procedure. In no other way can the 
good name of a trading nationality be kept 
unsullied before the world. Trade is not an 
individual but a social value and its safeguard- 
ing should be a social responsibility. The pro- 
visions for its protection should cover local, 
provincial, national and international condi- 



198 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tions and be entirely adequate to insure virtue 
in every branch of business. 

Commerce has not always had high moral 
ideals in what it takes to a foreign people or 
in the representatives who introduce the com- 
modities. What a country's trade does and 
the agents by which it is done are looked upon 
as representative of that country. The Amer- 
ican brand on intoxicants, narcotics, firearms, 
cinematic materials ally Christian America 
with all that that commerce does. The 
drunken sailors from an American warship 
in a foreign port, the scurrilous dealings of 
an American trader, the reckless conduct of 
an American representative are chargeable to 
Christian America. The Christian missionary 
is not infrequently almost alone in his repre- 
sentation of the fine idealism, splendid Chris- 
tian character, and noble aspirations of the 
American people before a non-Christian or 
semi- Christian public. Christianity in recent 
years has found one of its greatest obstacles 
in the un- Christian conduct and attitude of 
commercial representatives of American and 
European countries. 

Commerce frequently loses a great oppor- 
tunity to serve itself, its country, and its high- 
est purposes by failing to make its labors in 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 199 

foreign lands Christian as well as financial. 
Central Africa and many of the Asiatic 
Islands have become Mohammedan under the 
missionary labors of Mohammedan business 
men. They go on long itineraries of trade but 
they never lose the higher objective of bring- 
ing the people to the worship of their God 
through their own prophet. Why should men 
of business support missionaries, and business 
itself not be missionary? Commerce also finds 
in its own country the representatives of great 
foreign firms whose knowledge of Christianity 
is nigh unto naught. Christianity has at its 
doors the very men that should eventually be 
its chief exponents in foreign regions and will 
be recreant to a sacred trust if it does not 
earnestly seek them. Commerce owes the 
Christian missionary a great debt as its path- 
maker. It should be indeed to-day the joy- 
ous and efficient handmaiden of religion in 
its efforts to Christianize the world. Chris- 
tianity has no greater open channel to man- 
kind than this which commerce offers, and it 
should not be slow to possess it every whit. 
The fundamental principles of genuine busi- 
ness are moral, and root themselves in re- 
ligious conceptions. With commerce Chris- 
tianized, fleet messengers of Christian civiliza- 



200 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tion, thought and life would be shuttling the 
world. In the major points of missionary 
strategy commerce is prominent. It is a great 
main artery of social relations which Christ 
should control. Commerce, thinking Chris- 
tian, would lift trade to the first rank as a 
major missionary agency. 

IV 

Wealth and commerce are the two well- 
recognized arms of social power in the world 
to-day, but they owe their existence and sup- 
port to the third and greater, which is labor. 
Labor is the primary productive force with- 
out which society would fail, and in proportion 
to which all social values are developed and 
exalted. By labor is generally meant physical 
toil, or muscular effort directed to some use- 
ful end, but in reality it should include all 
intellectual exertion as well. Through the 
newly developed industrial mind it has come 
to be looked upon as a commodity to be bought 
and sold, and that irrespective of its human 
basis. In the opening of the Christian era 
physical labor was held in disrepute and only 
befitting slaves. This conception has lingered, 
in some measure, with the inheritors of that old 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 201 

Mediterranean civilization, and to-day is an 
obstacle in the industrial development of the 
countries which they dominate. The same 
view prevails in almost the entire non-Chris- 
tian world. Christianity has strenuously en- 
deavored to lift labor to the dignity of life 
expression and remove from it all stigma of 
life repression and the sense of social bond- 
age. The entire theory or conception of labor 
as a commodity should be utterly annihilated 
along with every other slavery-produced idea. 
Labor is and should be the free expression 
of one's obligation to society and the accepted 
mode of one's service to the community of 
man. Society is a fellowship of values, and 
every man is social just to the extent of his 
contribution to the common fund through 
which the exchange of values is made. Service 
to humanity should be the high controlling in- 
centive in human labor. 

Where society has not come to a moral basis 
nor acquired a moral perspective, labor has 
not assumed the dignity of life expression. In 
fact, where life itself has not been lifted to 
that high moral plane which a genuine religion 
of personality would establish, labor is re- 
garded as the necessity of the incompetent, 
the curse of the lowly born. This accounts in 



202 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

no small degree for the economic inefficiency 
of non-Christian peoples. In others the lack 
of the spur of necessity and uncertainty has 
allowed wantonness and indifference to labor. 
In the great oriental countries the laborers 
are noted for their patience, persistence and 
endurance, but the output of their toil is piti- 
fully small. They have very little command 
over natural forces ; their tools are crude ; their 
methods are primitive and their products are 
meager. Fifteen years ago Tokio had forty 
thousand jinrikisha men; practically all the 
transportation and transfer work of the city 
was done by human labor without horses or 
drays of any kind. Man for centuries has 
been the draft horse of Japan. In Nikko I 
saw forty men drawing on a two-wheeled cart 
up a steep hill a seven thousand pound dy- 
namo to be installed in a hotel. In India a 
family may have a half-dozen servants but they 
will not do more than a single good servant 
of the old type in an American home. A brick- 
layer in the United States will lay two or three 
times as many bricks in a day as will the aver- 
age bricklayer in Brazil. In all these non- 
Christian and semi-Christian countries indo- 
lence, or crudeness of implements, or primi- 
tiveness of methods produce an incompetency, 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 203 

an economic inefficiency, which retards prog- 
ress and commits the people to a low standard 
of living and social relations. 

The work of Christianity is to help ease 
the pressure that bears men down and increase 
the forces that bear men up. Lord Bacon 
once spoke of the end of knowledge as "the 
glory of God and the relief of man's estate." 
Surely Christianity could have nothing less. 
The relief of man's estate has directed the mis- 
sionary in his and her labors. They have em- 
phasized the dignity of labor and taught the 
most approved methods in agriculture, carpen- 
try, masonry and bricklaying, and the gentler 
arts of drawing, sewing, cooking and other 
domestic labors. The Methodist Episcopal 
Church has recently invested about $300,000 
in a great farm in the valley of Chili to dem- 
onstrate to that people, and other South 
Americans, what may be accomplished by mod- 
ern scientific farming. Industrial classes 
have been inaugurated and technical schools 
to the number of three hundred have been 
established in all parts of the world by Chris- 
tian missionaries to give to the people new 
conceptions of industry and new leaders for 
their material development. Large areas of 
the earth are lost to swamps that could be 



204* MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

drained, and even larger domains are now 
desolate because of lack of rainfall that could 
be made wonderfully productive by possible 
irrigation. Christianity is vitally concerned 
for the productivity of the earth because the 
populations are becoming crowded in some 
countries where the present capacity of pro- 
duction is limited; and human competency de- 
pends upon adequate nourishment. Men must 
also be raised to a new level of wants in order 
to new assertiveness. It is not so much what 
the human body consumes but what the human 
life in its best expression calls for that de- 
termines the worth of society. Only the capa- 
bilities for self-sustenance linked with the as- 
pirations of self-development give hope for so- 
cial efficiency. Christianity, by its creative 
power, will set in action the forces that re- 
deem waste places, that produce adequate 
capabilities, and that will inspire to that intel- 
ligent and constructive effort that is necessary 
to elevate the very quality of human living. 



Christianity to-day is vividly mindful that 
the challenge of the world is to such a recon- 
struction of society and its institutions as 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 205 

will harmonize them with the high ideals which 
it has always acclaimed. Religion does take 
hold on the imagination by its mystic hopes, 
and that strongly, but it makes its greatest 
appeal to reason through its expressions of 
substantial social values. The Christian prop- 
agandist who seeks to lay an enduring founda- 
tion for the Christian structure must endeavor 
to possess those social institutions through 
which human life comes to its most evident, 
complete, and continued expression. Among 
these may be reckoned the school, the family 
and the government. 

Education is a process of the intelligent 
transformation of society. The spirit of real 
learning is the spirit of freedom. The restless- 
ness in India to-day is due to the large num- 
ber of highly educated men that the English 
schools of the country have produced. Their 
intelligence demands a progress which they be- 
lieve their country is not having under the 
existing conditions and they seek the employ- 
ment of those methods and agencies which have 
proven productive of vast development in other 
countries. The place of the school in the ut- 
ter transformation of Germany in a quarter 
of a century has been powerfully demon- 
strated. The Japanese in two generations have 



206 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

passed from the most thoroughgoing feudal- 
ism to modern conditions of civilization. A 
people formerly negligible and considered un- 
fit for association with Western nations has 
leaped at a bound to a place of equality as 
a great world power among the leading nations 
of the earth. The process of this achievement 
has unquestionably been that of education. 
What has been in this way accomplished is 
possible to all peoples. The school is an out- 
standing social factor which Christianity must 
look to as its agent for elevating all social 
values. But a system of inferior Christian 
schools will unavoidably mean that Christianity 
itself would be brought by them under re- 
proach. But when it is remembered that the 
graduates of Robert College wrote the consti- 
tution of Bulgaria, that the graduates of 
Beirut College are in responsible positions, 
political, educational, professional and com- 
mercial, throughout the Levant, that the 
makers of the new China were graduates of 
Christian schools, that the literature of Japan 
has become Christian in ideals and atmosphere, 
it is clear what may be accomplished in trans- 
forming and exalting social values in accord- 
ance with the principles of Christianity in a 
short period by great educational institutions 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 207 

that are thoroughly Christian. The Christian 
Church has no greater responsibility than 
this of Christianizing the entire educational 
system of the whole world. The school 
should be lifted to the plane of the Christian 
ideal. 

But of all social institutions none perhaps 
is so distinctively Christian as the home. It 
does not exist among non-Christian peoples 
and no word connoting the conception is to be 
found in their languages. In India, with all 
its ancient culture, the wife is in the zenana, liv- 
ing in her domicile away from her master. 
In the near East the mother and daughters 
do not live in the house with the father and 
sons. The social meal, with all members of 
the family at the board, as is the rule in all 
distinctly Christian countries, is not known in 
the non-Christian lands. The home circle is 
a Christian creation and home itself is a Chris- 
tian conception. Christianity elevates the 
marital relation to a new level and thereby 
puts the family upon a new basis. At least 
one third of all the people in the world live 
in a polygamous society. Polygamy and con- 
cubinage characterized all wild tribes, whether 
in Africa or America, as they do the historic 
civilizations of China and India, the Moham- 



208 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

medan world and non-Christian peoples gener- 
ally. Christianity can countenance none of 
it, and wherever its light is shed the sense of 
the unrighteousness of this custom is created 
and soon leads to abandonment. The ques- 
tion arises, can a people be made truly Chris- 
tian and retain a polygamous society? Does 
not the gospel of Christ demand the eradica- 
tion of polygamy and concubinage? Can the 
gospel be truly preached with the home, the 
faithful marital life, and the virtues of the 
home relations ignored ? The answers to these 
questions cannot be in doubt. Personal re- 
ligion, if genuine, will manifest itself quickly 
in the family life. By it man's attitude to- 
ward his wife and children, his parents and 
his brothers and sisters, to all members of 
his family, will be lifted to a splendid height 
of consideration and affection. The home in 
the Christian system is the one institution that 
administers to the nurture of the highest vir- 
tues of the individual and the race. The world 
cannot be made Christian without the estab- 
lishment of the Christian home, nor can it be 
kept Christian if the home is allowed to de- 
teriorate in conceptions, in virtue, and its min- 
istrations to the family. 

The center of the home is woman, the wife, 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 209 

the mother, the sister, the friend. She has 
in her keeping the timeless interests of the 
race. The welfare of mankind is largely in 
her hands because of her influence upon the 
mind of the young. There is a deep mystery 
over the law of heredity, but woman is the 
medium through which social inheritance is 
transmitted to the new generation. The power 
of the future is locked up in the influences 
which woman, by the endowments of mother- 
hood, shall exert. Christianity has recognized 
this mysterious fact of human life and has 
placed a valuation on woman which no non- 
Christian religion even allowed. Woman has 
worth, to be sure, in her individuality equal 
to that of man's, but her worth as the medium 
for transmitting a social inheritance, a social 
ideal, is even greater. Woman has a capacity 
for emotion which gives her unmeasured power 
in effecting the majesty of the race. Her per- 
sonality is peculiarly endowed for social vision 
through long stretches of time which make for 
the preservation of the future of civilization. 
Christianity has made always for the establish- 
ment of woman in her true place. In all non- 
Christian lands and in all ages the status of 
woman has been and is low. Not infrequently 
she is treated as a chattel and almost always 



210 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

is made the victim of cruelty and lust. In 
the more primitive and barbaric tribes she is 
the heavy burden bearer and the slave of 
drudgery. It is only in highly Christianized 
countries that society protects her from galling 
labor and the conditions of toil that may be 
disastrous to the high social interests of which 
she is the heaven-endowed custodian. Recent 
years have witnessed a marvelous recognition 
of the rights and powers of the race in woman, 
and the immense reconstruction of the proc- 
esses of society in order to call into action those 
qualities of mankind which woman represents. 
It is not a matter simply of giving women 
certain prerogatives and responsibilities which 
will put her on a par with man. It is a matter 
of relating woman, the molder of social des- 
tiny, adequately to social values, that some- 
how in that mysterious impressionist manner 
she may become the better transmitter of the 
full social inheritance which the future genera- 
tions require for the larger development. 
Woman is the supreme social organism. Neg- 
lect of woman can result only in the retarda- 
tion of human development. Man has always 
received the best equipment available to fight 
the battle of life. It has not always been 
realized that woman needs equally as great 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 211 

equipment to fight the battle of social heredity. 
Elevating woman is not merely elevating an 
individual; it is elevating a primary social 
value. 

Woman's estate in any country is a fair in- 
dex to the character of the religious life in that 
country. Only religion deals with ultimate 
realities and keeps open the door to the fu- 
ture. Where religion is low that door stands 
but slightly ajar, and there woman sits in the 
shadows. Christianity only has grasped the 
meaning of woman to the race and the King- 
dom of God, and opened the ways for her ele- 
vation and sanctification. To-day in the most 
advanced Christian lands woman is having her 
opportunity with man, and more, for that 
higher development which her social responsi- 
bility to humanity requires. This opportunity 
Christianity would put at the command of 
every woman in the world. 

The Christian home established by the mis- 
sionary with the Christian wife and mother at 
its heart is the center of the remarkable revo- 
lutions which are being started in the thoughts 
and habits of mankind. This fact gives force 
to the statement of Rauschenbusch that "A 
celibate minister is more efficient for the 
church; a married minister of more service to 



212 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the Kingdom of God." The Christian family- 
is the revolutionizing Christian force. After 
seeing the Christian woman, refined and capa- 
ble, the Chinese woman no longer considers it 
good form to hobble on crippled feet to satisfy 
the whims of long centuries in the bindings 
that supposedly contributed to gentility. 
Wife-bargaining is passing as Christians have 
impressed people with the reasonableness and 
right of personal choice in life-mating. The 
wail of illiteracy becomes bitter as womanly 
intelligence in the missionary adorns society 
and elevates home companionship. Woman 
has already demonstrated in non- Christian 
lands her capacity to appreciate Christian 
ideals, to comprehend Christian conceptions, 
and to enter fully into Christian experience. 
She is fast becoming the hope of transmitting 
to the oncoming generations the Christian 
mind and the aptitudes for Christianization 
processes. When the world becomes Christian 
it will be found that woman has been the 
medium of revelation and of its redemption. 
Her social relation to the race in the capacity 
of motherhood, of custodian and trainer of 
childhood, and of conveyor of the emotional 
power of mankind must be regarded always 
as a supreme objective in the program of 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 213 

world Christianization. The home is the pre- 
eminent sphere of woman's best expression of 
herself and highest influence on the race, and 
as such must be looked upon as having pri- 
mary value for the Kingdom of God. The 
family is the unit in the development of man- 
kind, and its redemption, preservation and 
sanctification are essential to the consumma- 
tion of the ulterior purpose of Christianity. 
The elevation of these values throughout the 
world to the Christian standards is absolutely 
essential to making this world Christian. 



VI 

Along with the family and the school as 
social institutions of vast possibilities for the 
Kingdom of God must be placed the govern- 
ment, the voice of authority in society. By 
nothing are the spirit, force, intelligence, pur- 
pose and progress of a people more effectively 
displayed than by the character of govern- 
ment which it supports or tolerates. The de- 
velopments in government during the last half- 
century have been truly marvelous, and espe- 
cially so in those countries where Christian 
missions have been most active. The first mis- 
sionaries in the non- Christian countries found 



214 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

usually the government of an autocratic per- 
sonal ruler, whose decisions accorded more 
often with his own whims, or caprice, or the 
size of a bribe, than with the demands of jus- 
tice. From the magistrate to the viceroy this 
was the rule. In some instances in these coun- 
tries, and even in semi- Christian countries, the 
bureaucratic oligarchy was in power and the 
theory of government was that of exploitation 
in the interests of the ruling class. The well- 
being of the people was a matter of minor 
importance. Corruption and inefficiency char- 
acterized such government, and do so to-day. 
This is the trouble with China, the old Turkish 
empire, Persia, and Central Asia. Korea went 
down under the weight of a most corrupt gov- 
ernment, while the downfall of the Manchu 
Dynasty is largely attributable to its corrup- 
tion. The oligarchies in the South American 
republics exploit their countries and are open 
to the charges of corruption in politics and 
inefficiency in public service. The history of 
the other Latin American nations, large and 
small, is a story of shameful exploitation. Po- 
litical revolutions are as often traceable to the 
ambitions of loot gatherers in public office as 
to real sentiments of genuine patriotism. How 
far below real Christian ideals of government 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 215 

these nations fall may be seen in the statement 
by that great Christian statesman, Thomas R. 
Marshall, made upon his retirement from the 
vice presidency of the United States : " A gov- 
ernment dedicated to the inalienable rights of 
man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness, can find its perfect accomplishment only 
in republics brave and strong enough to rise 
above the ambitions, passions, and prejudices 
of individuals and groups. Representative 
government was intended to guarantee these 
inalienable rights of man through the enact- 
ment and enforcement of laws calculated to 
preserve and promote equal and exact justice 
to all men." What non-Christian peoples ever 
had a government dedicated "to the inaliena- 
ble rights of man"? What people will ever 
become Christian that fail to dedicate them- 
selves, their lives and their sacred honors to 
the establishment and maintenance of such a 
government? Despotic autocracies and tyran- 
nical oligarchies and exploiting officialdom can 
never harmonize with genuine Christianity, or 
even show sympathy for its principles and 
movements. They prefer depraved paganism, 
illiterate superstition, or blatant agnosticism to 
a religion that lifts the ideals of "inalienable 
rights of man," and that demands honesty, in- 



216 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tegrity, and efficiency in public affairs. They 
choose "darkness rather than light because 
their deeds are evil," and they will not choose 
otherwise until the impact of Christian civili- 
zation shall drive them from power and en- 
throne other forces that will have diligent re- 
spect to the "inalienable rights of man" and 
the means and processes of their complete de- 
velopment. There can be no such thing as a 
virile Christianity under a corrupt govern- 
ment, such as existed in Korea and China. 
The two are exclusive ideas. Christianity 
makes for virtue, integrity and moral purpose, 
and government without these recognizes in 
Christianity a dangerous foe. 

The world has witnessed in the last two 
decades a marvelous awakening of natural con- 
sciousness among all nations of Asia. How 
far Japan has been the leader and teacher 
could scarcely be said, but it is true the peo- 
ples are arousing from the long slumber and 
asking for a new evaluation. The Great War 
developed a tremendous expectancy on the 
part of small national groups. President Wil- 
son's famous Fourteen Points seemed a new 
gospel to them, although it contained no prin- 
ciples for which his own nation had not long 
stood. The Fourteen Points were not made 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 217 

effective because of the inability of the world 
to take them and incarnate them. But they 
are on tables of stone and will not wear away. 
The day of their acceptance and embodiment 
into the framework of world government will 
inevitably come. The interesting thing at this 
time is the marvelously sensitive consciousness 
which the nations possess. They are tired of 
oligarchies, big nation-ism, world power domi- 
nance, and the diplomacy of spoils-takers. 
They watch, as for the morning, for the gleam 
of a new internationalism under the protec- 
tion and direction of a real Christianity. 
World-intermingling through students, tour- 
ists, commercialists and diplomatists is having 
a miraculous effect on the consciousness of 
all peoples in regard to their own governments. 
They are getting strong side-lights on their 
institutions, their liberties and their political 
deficiencies. The emigration of their people 
has established points of contact with the vari- 
ous nations of the earth, and especially of the 
countries that have made most of their liberty- 
giving and liberty-assuring governments. As 
a result, governmental principles and practice 
are in a state of flux in almost all nations, 
whether in Asia, Africa, South America, or the 
settled countries of Europe. The period of 



218 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

reconstruction and reconstitution must inevi- 
tably ensue. 

That Christianity through its missionary 
propaganda, and through the multiplied con- 
tacts which it has effected, has had tremendous 
influence in bringing about the present state 
of affairs can scarcely be controverted. The 
overwhelming evidence which can be adduced 
cannot fail to be convincing of the fact. The 
question is, what contribution has Christianity 
now to make to the necessary governmental 
reconstruction of mankind, and what end has 
Christianity to promote by this reconstruction? 
The question must be answered and answered 
unmistakably if the supreme objective of mak- 
ing the world Christian is achieved. In the 
first place, Christianity must interpret to all 
peoples the meaning, purpose and end of gov- 
ernment. It must be understood that missions 
have no call or purpose to dictate the forms 
and instruments of government, nor to sit 
in judgment upon those that exist. Christian- 
ity looks upon government as society's mode 
of self-expression in its endeavors to attain 
the great progressive objectives in human de- 
velopment. The redemption, elevation, and 
perfecting of humanity is the objective in all 
social institutions, and government must al- 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 219 

ways be directed to the consummation of that 
end. The progress of the race in the consum- 
mation of these supreme objectives is tied up 
with this highest form of social expression. 
Government, as the social institution that 
makes for the group destiny and largely for 
the individual development of a people can at- 
tain its supreme ends only as it makes the 
advancement of personality the determinative 
factor in all efforts and movements. Not 
property but personality is the power of the 
state. The Christian interpretation of the 
meaning, purpose and end of government has 
brought the demand for liberty, stabilization 
and sense of security against despoiling 
tyrants. Revolutions have resulted from the 
germination of the Christian ideals of gov- 
ernment. Christianity requires by its very 
nature political honesty. President Cleveland 
expressed it, "Public office is a public trust." 
Corruption and inefficiency in government are 
intolerable in the Christian regime, while auto- 
cratic despotism and oligarchical tyranny and 
exploitation are made indefensible. Christian- 
ity makes the service of humanity the control- 
ling national purpose and the perfecting of cit- 
izenship the primary patriotic endeavor. 

The creative energy of Christianity is never 



220 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

more manifest than in the remarkable trans- 
formations which it brings about in all social 
values. Government, the family, the home, 
the state of woman, the evaluation of child- 
hood, the function of the school, all bear un- 
equivocal evidence to the ennobling and up- 
lifting power which Christianity introduces. 
The world can be made to think and act Chris- 
tion only as these social values shall express 
the Christian purpose and convey the Chris- 
tian power. The mission of Christianity is 
to create those conditions of the social mind 
that shall make normal in the world the Christ 
thought of humanity, its relations and its ac- 
tivities. The social ideal, as revealed in 
Christ's Kingdom of God, no man has a right 
to regard as unattainable in earthly conditions. 
The late Benjamin Kidd in his "The Science 
of Power" said, "There is not an existing in- 
stitution in the world of civilized humanity 
which cannot be profoundly modified or al- 
tered, or abolished in a generation. There is 
no form or order of government or of the do- 
minion of force which cannot be removed out 
of the world within a generation. There is 
no ideal in conformity with the principles of 
civilization dreamed of by any dreamer or 
idealist which cannot be realized within the life- 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 221 

time of those around him." In speaking of 
civilization he says: "Within the lifetime of a 
single generation it can be made to undergo 
changes so profound, so revolutionary, so per- 
manent, that it would almost appear as if hu- 
man nature had been completely altered in the 
interval." 

Christian propagandists need to be brought 
definitely and forcibly to the conviction that the 
social ideals of Christianity are possible of real- 
ization. They need not be discouraged because 
genuine civilization has not yet arrived. Civ- 
ilization awaits the very power which Chris- 
tianity with its personalism is capable of pro- 
ducing. The glorified savagery and individ- 
ualistic supremacy which have characterized 
the highest that has existed hitherto can be re- 
tired only by the force of commanding social 
ideals which Christianity inspires and supports. 
There is limitless power in the social relation, 
and the question arises, shall Christianity allow 
this to lie dormant, or be misdirected, while the 
world wallows in wanton willfulness and woeful 
waste? The emergence of the efficient individ- 
ual is always acclaimed with proper laudation, 
and Christianity is constituted to bring about 
that emergence, but shall not the world be 
made expectant of the rise of an efficient so- 



222 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ciety, in which the efficient individual shall find 
full appointments for complete expression? 
Society is as much, if not more, under the law 
of heredity as the individual. Social ideals are 
operative far beyond the reach of a generation. 
They gather momentum not only by the reason 
that they convince, but by the emotions which 
they arouse. It has never yet been decided 
that the emotions were any the less powerful 
than reason in determining the course of so- 
ciety. Christianity is sovereign in that realm, 
always making contribution of inspiration, re- 
finement and direction. By this fact its access 
to the institutions of society is direct and com- 
plete. Christianity's power of achievement in 
the world can never be applied more effectively 
for the consummation of its eternal and divine 
purpose than through the institutions of society 
and the ideals which they embody. 

The challenge of the world is to the forces 
of Christianity. Mr. Kidd has declared that 
"the science of power in civilization is the sci- 
ence of the passion for the ideal." Christianity 
creates social ideals that are regenerative of all 
social values and sustains the passion for their 
consummation. Its capabilities become its con- 
demnation if social inefficiency and social de- 
pravity be allowed to continue and social ruin 



ELEVATING SOCIAL VALUES 223 

be permitted to ensue. Christianity is forced 
to accept the obligation to lift society to its own 
ideal or assume the responsibility for the failure 
and prostitution of civilization. Well may the 
Church of God take its stand this day with the 
Seer of Patmos and resolutely declare: "The 
kingdoms of this world shall become the king- 
doms of Our Lord and His Christ and He shall 
reign forever and ever." 



LECTURE V: VITALIZING ETHI 
CAL IDEALS 



Whatever may be true of other religions, 
Christianity cannot disengage itself from hu- 
man civilization. In fact, civilization must 
ever be the direct aim and end of all intelligent 
Christian effort. Christianity sets a standard 
for civilization as well as for the individual life; 
wherever that standard is even approached it 
gets its strongest apologetic; wherever in so- 
called Christian countries that standard is neg- 
lected it has been made to suffer blame. 
When men said in the last decade, "Civiliza- 
tion has failed," they said also, "Christianity 
has failed." Christianity's failure had been in 
its lack of ability or effort to command civiliza- 
tion, and civilization's failure had been in its 
ignoring of the principles which Christianity 
had offered. The fact should now be clearly 
and forcibly recognized that the Christian re- 
ligion can never be dominant except as it com- 
mands the highways of human movement and 
development. Christianity must seek to con- 

224 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 225 

trol with its principles the environment in 
which people live, for human destiny here and 
hereafter is vitally affected by the forces that 
play upon human life. The main arteries of 
social relations must be accepted as great ob- 
jectives in any far-reaching strategy of Chris- 
tian propaganda. The kingdoms of this world, 
such as power, wealth, industry, trade, human 
life, the family, national consciousness and 
government, should be made the kingdoms of 
Our Lord and His Christ. The very elements 
of civilization are to be vitalized by Christian 
thought and purpose if humanity is to be 
caught up into the intent of redemption. The 
world has that conception to-day and it will 
not soon lay it off. 

Christianity has been necessarily revolution- 
ary in society, and in the future it must be even 
more so. It has not taken over and absorbed 
the forms, conditions and expressions of civili- 
zation that have developed under the influence 
and inspiration of other religious beliefs, ex- 
cept to its own hurt. Wherever the Church in 
its worldly thirst for dominion has adopted, or 
adapted, entirely or in part, institutions from 
paganism or semi-paganism, deterioration of 
the Christian faith and experience has resulted. 
This has been true by its inclusions from Juda- 



226 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ism, Hellenism, ancient Romanism and North 
European paganism, and it has been true in 
the modern era when ecclesiastical dominion 
has outrun spiritual evangelization. Chris- 
tianity must grow the institutions and the 
forms of society through which it is to have its 
fullest expression. It is no product of eclecti- 
cism, no composition of contributing faiths, 
no mechanism of harmonizing religionists. 
Christianity is an organizing principle, life- 
giving and life-asserting. It is a growth, a 
life development, of an organism as the oak is 
the life expression of the acorn. As the oak 
necessarily reveals the potentialities of the 
acorn, so the Christian civilization discloses the 
potentialities of the Christian life. Christian- 
ity cannot now be presented independently of 
the Christian civilization, or rather the civiliza- 
tion which has been evolved in the atmosphere 
and by the forces of the Christian faith. Social 
values take on new phases and new relations 
with the movements which it inspires. Christi- 
anity could never make itself known and ap- 
preciated except through what its spirit and 
purpose inevitably produces. 

The Christian missionary is more, therefore, 
than the exponent of a new religious belief. 
He is the representative, the incarnation, the 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 227 

epitome, and therefore the interpreter of a 
new civilization and of the sources from which 
that civilization came. To be sure, he goes 
out to teach Christianity and to make Chris- 
tians of the people, but his largest instructions 
are in his life. He interprets Christianity 
more by his personality than by his words. In 
his personality he carries the impact of his 
country, his college, his church, his nation, his 
family, the society that has produced him, and 
for a lifetime he endeavors to put into form 
and actualities what he carries in conceptions 
and impulses. Personal religion cannot be 
anything less than the religion of a person in 
human relations. Angels are not qualified to 
be missionaries. If religion were only a mat- 
ter of the personal spirit and the heavenly 
world it would seem that no other beings 
would be so well qualified, as they know what 
is required and desired. But they lack the hu- 
man relations and the elements of life which 
this world has produced. Jesus lived thirty 
years in human relations before entering upon 
his mission of redemption. Had He need to 
do so ? He was in a family ; a youth in a neigh- 
borhood ; a carpenter among laborers ; a physi- 
cian among the sick; a citizen of a govern- 
ment; a member of a race; a man among men. 



228 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

He gave evidence that to Him all these rela- 
tions were not only important, but vital in the 
Kingdom of God upon which He laid His chief 
emphasis. Angels could not do this. They 
could talk only of heaven and the virtues of 
the redeemed soul. The message of the angel 
is important; yea, essential, but the gospel of 
human life is the need of the human world, and 
by the angels' message will come to full 
fruition. 

The gospel of the human life is the Chris- 
tian missionary's offering to the peoples of 
the earth. He goes as the exponent of life in 
relations just as Christ revealed it. The lis- 
tening hearts of the race have been awaiting 
anxiously just such gospel from the teachers 
and promulgators of religion. Sad it is, but 
true, that through the weary years for the 
most part they have listened in vain. Religion 
and human life were not separate in the think- 
ing and teaching of Jesus. He went so far as 
to call the ecclesiastical leaders of his day and 
his people hypocrites and a generation of vipers 
because in their religious zeal and bigotry they 
exhibited no concern for human life, nor even 
for the virtues which should characterize a true 
human life. By His condemnation of the 
scribes and Pharisees for their narrow re- 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 229 

ligious conceptions and unsympathetic attitude 
toward human life He hastened, if not 
brought on, His own crucifixion. It was 
Jesus who really discovered humanity and 
gave it intelligent and adequate relation to 
divinity. The follower of Jesus, and espe- 
cially one sent out to make Him known to the 
world, is under solemn obligation to present 
and expound the meaning and value of human 
life and its relations as well as to interpret the 
doctrinal elements of the Christian creed. 
Failure in the former is a formidable barrier 
to the acceptance of the latter. Christianity 
admits of no separation between creed and 
conduct, between faith and life, between re- 
ligion and morals. It is this union, organic 
and inseparable, which gives Christianity its 
unanswerable appeal to the entire human race. 



ii 

Christianity is based upon the indissoluble 
unity of morals and religion. Religion deals 
primarily with the relation of man to God; 
morals with the relation of man to man. Jesus 
never separated the ethical problem from the 
religious. His religious teaching involved 
plain ethical principles and could scarcely be 



230 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

stated except in that relation. Without His 
fundamental, ethical assumptions much of His 
expressly religious teaching would have no 
force. A very large proportion of His teach- 
ing was simply and distinctly ethical. He laid 
down and made plain by numerous statements 
and illustrations many fundamental laws of 
human life. His ethics formed a large and 
vital part of His marvelous doctrines. He 
made duty the will of God and found the will 
of God expressed in some duty. His life was 
the realization and illustration of His ethical 
principles and in His person can be found the 
best expression of His ethics. He embodied 
the ideal that He set forth. His matchless 
personality created a moral standard which 
cannot be avoided or ignored if His religious 
doctrines and revelations are to be accepted 
for effective application. He offers no re- 
ligious light nor confident hope independently 
of ethical requirements and moral achieve- 
ments. With His ethical and religious teach- 
ings intricately interwoven it becomes evident 
that the religion of Jesus Christ cannot be pre- 
sented, promulgated and promoted without 
full and continued emphasis upon His ethical 
conceptions, ideals and demands. The Chris- 
tian religion carries with it the Christian ethics 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 231 

and neither will have power without the 
other. 

The ethical conception of religion is point- 
edly and forcefully presented in the Sermon 
on the Mount. Here is to be found the state- 
ment and elucidation of the basic principles of 
human life. Here are set forth the qualities 
essential to true character, full happiness and 
worthy influence. Here are made plain the 
sublime motives to living. To many very sin- 
cere and even devout persons these ethical 
ideals are important, but not essential and 
fundamental to salvation. They have become 
persuaded that the essence of Christianity is 
in its mystical doctrines, its metaphysical ex- 
pressions of Christ's relation to God, to man, 
and to human sin and salvation, and so they 
are compelled to give this marvelous enuncia- 
tion of basic principles of human life a sec- 
ondary place in the Christian system of re- 
ligion. They do not find in this matchless 
statement what they call the "blood" — that is, 
the atonement as they interpret that great es- 
sential doctrine. The gospel with them is 
identified with the sacrificial act of Jesus 
Christ comprised in His death and passion and 
consummated by the crucifixion. Redemption 
finds its efficacy in this atonement, and what- 



232 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ever else may be added cannot be accepted as 
essential to salvation. Preaching this gospel 
as thus understood has by this group of be- 
lievers been considered comprehensive of all 
that Christianity requires. But there is an- 
other and larger group that holds just as 
tenaciously to the great central doctrines of 
the atonement and the incarnation, and at the 
same time believes that the ethical conceptions 
and ideals set forth by Jesus in His supreme 
statement of principles are also essential to 
human salvation. They hold, and rightly, 
that the teachings of Jesus must not be di- 
vorced from the life of Jesus. He was not 
dealing in nonessentials when He spoke. His 
ethics were as much the expression of His life 
as was His religion or His sacrificial acts, and 
these cannot be omitted when He is presented 
to men or nations, nor ignored or minimized 
when He is accepted as a Divine Savior. 

Jesus began with His demand for a new 
mind, a new attitude, a new character — "Re- 
pent!" That is a challenge to a new expres- 
sion of personality. The false standards of 
life must be abandoned. The life that is really 
worth while must become the absorbing aim. 
Things basic to high living must come to pri- 
mary consideration and adoption. He began 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 233 

in His exposition of fundamental principles 
with contrasting the humble, the teachable, 
the open-minded, with the proud, the con- 
ceited, the self-satisfied and self-willed. He 
finds here the door into the Kingdom of 
heaven, and it might be said into the kingdom 
of knowledge. Doctor Henry Churchill King, 
in his "Ethics of Jesus," has pointed out that 
against the man of brazen assurance, of jeal- 
ousy for his own rights, and of ambition for his 
own glory, Jesus puts the man of meekness, 
self-control, tranquil courage and conscious 
strength. Over against the tyrannical, the 
hard, the intolerant, He sets the compassion- 
ate, the sympathetic and the forbearing. Over 
against those who stir up strife, create conten- 
tions, encourage war, He puts those who rec- 
oncile differences, harmonize elements and 
promote peace. Over against the meddler, 
the busybody, the tattler, the mischief-maker, 
He puts those who bring in the state of friend- 
liness, neighborliness and social good will. 
Over against the self-indulgent, the luxury- 
loving, soft sentimentalist, He puts the heroic, 
the self-sacrificing, the persecuted for right- 
eousness. These qualities of character Jesus 
marks out as the supreme conditions of happi- 
ness and the primary factors in a powerful in- 



234 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

fluence for the kingdom which He was con- 
cerned in establishing. 

Doctor King has given the following as the 
code of the world, the beatitudes of the world- 
lings — "Happy are the proud, for theirs is 
the world. Happy are the unscrupulous, for 
they shall need no comfort. Happy are those 
who claim everything, for they shall possess 
the earth. Happy are they who hold back 
from no sin, for they shall drain pleasure's 
cup. Happy are the tyrants, for they need 
no mercy. Happy are the impure, to whose 
lust no bound can be put, for they shall see 
many harlots. Happy are they who can stir 
anger unhindered, whose ambition is un- 
checked, for they shall be as gods. Happy 
are they who have never sacrificed, for theirs 
is all the world." Jesus has set as the task of 
His followers the entire reversal of the world's 
code and the substitution with all mankind of 
that law of life which conserves, magnifies and 
sanctifies the noble elements of our humanity. 
Self-mastery, the pursuit of rightness, intelli- 
gent and sympathetic respect for personality 
are qualities of character which inevitably 
make for the upbuilding of true society. The 
great coming civilization guided by Jesus' code 
and not the world's is the aim of Christian ef- 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 235 

fort. In such a civilization a brotherhood of 
men is a possibility and in no other. With 
such an ethical ideal humanity will have a 
chance to come to its maturity and display 
forces worthy of the Creative Intelligence and 
Love. With such possibilities human effort 
is inspired to sublime tasks. On the other 
hand, what is there in the code of the world to 
lift man and civilization to heights in keeping 
with man's consciousness of his own powers? 
Men find life dreary without competent mo- 
tives. It was Emerson who said, "A good 
intention clothes itself with sudden power." 
Jesus set the dynamic of living in the motives 
with which he charged the human soul. First, 
He placed the demand for thoroughgoing con- 
sistency of life. This is no fragmentary mat- 
ter. A judgment is inevitable and only a life 
substantial in every part can endure the test- 
ing. It is better to lose one of the members 
of the body than to have the entire body 
thrown into the dumping pit. Duplicity in 
making answer to life's demands brings only 
condemnation. "You must be perfect," con- 
sistent in your life, as your Heavenly Father 
is consistent in His, if you hope to reach this 
standard. Second, He placed a loving Father- 
hood at the heart of the world and at the cen- 



236 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ter of its life. There is no partiality there. 
There is no forgetfulness of any. There is 
deep concern for all. Third, He made every 
man a brother of every other man. He urged 
that man be reconciled to every brother before 
any effort is made to win the favor of the 
Father. The brother may at some time be 
minded to strike you, or take your possessions, 
or do you injury, but treat him like a brother 
nevertheless. Whatever you would like men 
to do to you, do just the same to them. The 
life of every man is knit up with one's own. 
Every man has a priceless personality in the 
estimation of Jesus. In all essentials men 
are alike. The brotherhood of the race is 
based upon its essential unity and the com- 
mon Fatherhood in the Creator. These clear- 
cut, unequivocal, emphatic teachings of Jesus 
not only set forth commanding social ideals 
and objectives, but they place dynamic mo- 
tives at the heart of humanity. 

The supreme purpose of the Christian prop- 
aganda is the delivery of the full gospel of 
Jesus Christ in power to all peoples, that His 
Kingdom, with all that He meant it should 
embrace, may become the established will and 
habit of mankind. The peril always to par- 
tial beings such as men are is that they may 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 237 

limit their emphasis to that only which ap- 
peals strongly to them as essential. They are 
not always able to see that all that Jesus em- 
phasized, and even suggested, is essential. The 
full gospel comprises the solution of the ethi- 
cal and religious problems of humanity and 
there is ro solution of the one without the so- 
lution of the other. Religious dogmas are no 
more indispensable to the adequate presenta- 
tion of Christianity than the ethical ideals and 
demands which Jesus outlined and empha- 
sized. The moral standard in Christianity is 
just as necessary to the plan of salvation as 
the doctrines based upon the mystical and 
metaphysical elements of Christ's sacrifices. 
Sacerdotalism with its pretentious claims of 
exclusive authority and power in administer- 
ing the benefits of the latter has always made 
light of the former. Wherever the moral re- 
quirements of Christianity are duly met and 
emphasized Sacerdotalism becomes more and 
more glaringly empty and vain. There can 
be no substitute for the moral character which 
genuine Christian faith develops, and any 
priestly efforts at such substitution can have 
merit only with those who refuse to learn from 
the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth the full gos- 
pel of life and salvation. 



238 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

III 

All non-Christian and semi- Christian peo- 
ples suffer to-day by reason of the evident di- 
vorce of religion and morals which has been 
encouraged, or at least wittingly tolerated by 
their priestly leaders. The priestly leaders 
are first accused of bringing about or allowing 
this separation because the priestly act by its 
very nature leads to such a condition. It is 
the act of ransom, of buying off, of appeasing, 
of making satisfaction for past transgression 
by the bestowal of a gift, of substituting 
through some supposed innate or imputed 
power and authority some accumulated virtue 
for the requirement which wrongdoing had 
called forth. In India one may witness to- 
day the sacrificial slaughter of the kid or the 
lamb before the altar of bloody Kali. In 
Japan and China one may see altars filled 
with offerings to spirits who would be dis- 
turbers of peace without such consideration. 
In some belated lands even human sacrifices 
are still occasionally made to meet the ven- 
geance of some outraged deity. Priestcraft 
thrives upon the faith of the people in its abil- 
ity to save them from the dire consequences of 
their own misdoings. Priests not only encour- 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 239 

age, but they nourish such monstrous credulity 
up to the point of implicit reliance upon them 
for extrication from the just punishment for 
unrepented misdoings. What must be the 
effect upon moral character of the priest- 
hood emphasizing from week to week, and 
even from day to day, by the spoken word 
and the posted placard, the possibility of ob- 
taining for current coin or so many repeti- 
tions of designated prayers indulgences for 
wrong doings? Indulgences! What a trav- 
esty on religion ! Yet, by these granted indul- 
gences, by the pretentious promises to shorten 
the period of expiation after death, by the 
boast of holding the keys to the chambers of 
life and light, the priesthood in all lands and 
in all faiths maintains its place and power. 

The basis of authority in the priesthood is 
never claimed to be in the inner purity of the 
priest. Its power is imputed and external. 
The religious body is the real representative 
of the Divine Being and when it acts through 
the priesthood the divine benefit is bestowed. 
Thus the priests acting officially carry a bene- 
fit altogether independent of their personal 
character. They can give to each other the 
cleansing from wrong-doing which they be- 
lieve they acting officially can bestow. They 



240 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

become a great cleansing fountain for the vile 
pollutions of wretched lives. Is it any wonder 
that in all lands which they control religiously 
priests suffer unspeakable accusations against 
their moral character? Would it be any sur- 
prise that men in their positions, where black 
streams of corrupt living flow unceasingly, 
should be tempted beyond endurance? The 
priesthood is a victim as much as a victimizer 
in such an unnatural, unreasonable, unethical 
and unreligious system of belief and practice. 
The censure for a low state of morals in any 
country must necessarily rest upon the re- 
ligious leaders and teachers. The priestly 
system supposedly makes possible the escape 
from the ultimate consequences of bad morals, 
and therefore it is wanting in the force and 
sense of necessity to develop an energized 
moral leadership. Priests seldom in any lands 
become moral reformers and leaders against 
vice. They are so completely occupied with 
the other-world consequences of immorality 
and their own capabilities for destroying those 
consequences that they give little heed to the 
dire results that threaten earthly society. 
Their every effort is to keep God off men in- 
stead of getting God to men. They foster the 
belief that in the very last moment of a very 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 241 

notoriously evil life they can give an absolu- 
tion that insures safety. Such a philosophy 
of religion, such a practice of supposed au- 
thority, such a concern continually for the 
after-life cannot do otherwise than unfit men 
for great, vital, moral leadership. It is not 
easy to get free of such a stupefying system. 
Priests grow from boys and are not chosen 
from men. Almost from infancy they have 
breathed the atmosphere of the priesthood. 
They never chose the priesthood; they were 
given to it and reared in it. This is true of all 
priestly and sacerdotal faiths. Their sphere 
has been exceedingly cramped; their horizon 
distressingly limited. Their travel has been 
only from convent to convent, monastery to 
monastery, temple to temple. They know 
not the world of men as it should be known 
by those who are under such tremendous moral 
responsibility. They lack equipment for moral 
leadership in a throbbing world of human re- 
lations. 

The non-Christian world and the semi- 
Christian world is a priestly dominated world, 
and in a priestly dominated world morals re- 
ceive meager emphasis from the religious 
leaders. The nature and purpose of priest- 
craft makes it so. There is no hope of raising 



242 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the moral standard by means of that priestly- 
leadership. That must be done independently 
of that leadership or more often in spite of it. 
Evangelical Christianity lays down its first 
challenge to the non-Christian and semi-Chris- 
tian peoples in its moral ideals and require- 
ments. It has at the very beginning the unde- 
sirable task of discounting the existing priest- 
hood because of its moral delinquencies, either 
personal or social. The stress that is put upon 
the ethical ideals and demands of Jesus is in 
marked contrast to anything ever previously 
required by the priesthood. The emphasis 
is at once shifted from ceremonies and ordi- 
nances to life and character. The principles 
of human relations enunciated by Jesus be- 
come necessarily an arraignment of all re- 
ligious leaders who have ignored them, or 
transgressed them, and been ignorant of them. 
At first the proponents of the new faith and 
new ethics are treated as fanatics or deluded 
extremists. But the humanity which Jesus 
presents in His person and in His teachings 
finds a response in the common humanity of 
the race. His fundamental laws of human 
life are so reasonable, so desirable to thought- 
ful builders of society that His ethics become 
irresistible and lead at once to inquiry into His 



VITALIZING ETHICAI IDEALS 243 

religion. The more the priesthood combats 
the ethics as well as the religion of Jesus the 
more it opens to view its own character and 
brings upon itself accusations of moral short- 
comings. The moral emphasis is subversive 
of priestly claims and is revolutionary of the 
philosophy of the priestly system and it can- 
not be made without throwing the flashlight on 
the priesthood itself. This in no small way is 
responsible for much of the conflict between 
teachers of genuine Christianity and the non- 
Christian and semi-Christian leaders. Chris- 
tianity's first word to the non-Christian and 
un-Christian man is "Repent." The first word 
of the semi-Christian and the non-Christian 
leader is "Do penance." Christianity demands 
in unmistakable terms "Change your life"; 
the others, "Produce the ransom price." The 
one gives as a reason of its demands a door to 
be entered ; the others a possible way of escape. 
These two conceptions of how man is to deal 
with the Supreme Being and the human life 
account in no small degree for the state of 
ethical ideals and conduct to be found among 
the various peoples of the earth. So long as 
the priestly system can maintain itself in au- 
thority and power in any country, whatever 
its religion, morals will not receive from the 



244 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

religious leaders any adequate consideration 
and emphasis. It is just as true that should 
morals be given proper emphasis by any people 
the priestly system will wane and the prophet 
of righteousness and truth will assume re- 
ligious leadership and come into supreme spir- 
itual power. 

IV 

In nothing is genuine Christianity more dis- 
tinctive and more alone than in its emphasis 
upon the worth of the individual. Wherever 
heathenism reigns or wherever Christianity is 
wrapped in mists man's life is cheap. Mo- 
hammed built his great system upon the utter 
disregard of human life, and his followers in 
their blood-thirstiness have left a trail of hor- 
ror and desolation wherever they have been 
impelled by their selfish interests. Their bru- 
talities toward the Armenians illustrate what 
they are minded to do in order to the estab- 
lishment of their own will and power. Life 
has no sacredness to the fatalistic Moham- 
medan. Wherever Confucius and Buddha 
have been dominant the killing of hundreds of 
thousands in war or a scourge, or by some 
catastrophe, is not an event of startling impor- 
tance, except where the impact of Christianity 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 245 

has been felt. Human suffering from famines, 
floods, plagues and pestilence seems not to 
arouse any great sympathy. In China the 
barbaric habit of tossing into a public vat the 
undesirable babies to die has only recently 
been discontinued. In India, the home of the 
Hindu cults, the age-long custom of burning 
widows with their deceased husbands on the 
funeral pyre was not discontinued until pro- 
hibited by a Christian government. Canni- 
balism in the Fiji Islands and among the 
African tribes did not cease until after the 
proclamation of Christianity. Cruelty of the 
most revolting kind is common in all non- 
Christian countries. Ordeals of the most un- 
speakable torture are resorted to in courts and 
in the punishment of crime. Suicide is almost 
too prevalent to receive notice. It is more 
common in China than in any other country 
perhaps because of the frivolous estimate there 
put upon numan life. In Japan suicide has 
been all but canonized and admired as an act 
of heroism and a sign of distinction. In India 
it is common, and usually is the result of un- 
happy marriage or domestic cruelty. But in 
all cases and in all lands suicide is due to a low 
estimate of the value of human life. In non- 
Christian countries the individual is counted 



246 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

for nothing. He is brought up with his sense 
of responsibility confined to his membership 
in a family, a tribe, a clan, or a guild. He is 
a part of a social machine. He is to be con- 
tent to be what his fathers were, and satisfied 
if his descendants rise only to the position 
which he has been compelled to hold. Such a 
man can never fulfill any just and adequate 
conception of humanity. He is the victim of 
a direful philosophy and a bondslave to a so- 
cial system that crushes human hope. Human 
existence to him is a mad struggle in which 
fate is the determinative force. Life has no 
goal in this earthly sphere and better is the 
end than burdensome distress and perplexing 
uncertainty. Pessimism reigns supreme where 
human life in any form is held in contempt. 
This is everywhere true to-day in the non- 
Christian and semi-Christian world. Only the 
lifting of human life to its proper valuation 
will restore to the world a just and adequate 
philosophy of human existence. 

Christianity comes with its doctrines of per- 
sonality and high individual worth and de- 
mands that life be made worth while and that 
the dignity of the human is respected. This is 
why slavery has been wiped out. This is why 
human barbarity and ferocity die out with the 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 247 

demonstration of the Christian virtues, and in 
their stead spring up those qualities of charac- 
ter and strength which enrich and ennoble civ- 
ilization. The human body takes on new 
value as the organism of the spirit. The peo- 
ple are not only taught not to abuse it, but 
how to refine and strengthen it and its higher 
sensibilities for its part in life's processes. 
Sanitation and housing are all but invariably 
bad wherever Christianity has not been; and 
they come to the fore for adequate attention 
wherever Christianity gets a competent voice. 
Christianity seeks to command with its princi- 
ples the environment in which people live. 
The missionary who does not produce a stir 
of interest in better living in the zone of his 
operations may question the effectiveness of 
his services, whatever may be the appearances 
of success. Christianity aims directly at the 
redemption of life, whether for this world or 
the next. Whatever may be said in behalf of 
other religions the facts of their civilizations 
show that humanitarianism never was truly 
manifested until Christianity pressed upon the 
consciences of all people its exalted estimate 
of the individual worth of human life. 

Christianity presents a moral code that is 
directly antagonistic to many characteristic 



248 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

practices of various peoples. For instance, 
the gambling habit is widespread in the world. 
China seems to lead in this fearful vice. The 
indulgence of the Chinese is immemorial and 
inveterate. In Korea the passion is appar- 
ently unrestrained. In Japan it is less than 
in China, but it is exceedingly common. In 
Siam it is a national evil, while in Burma it 
is called the "bane of the country." The Brit- 
ish Government has checked it in India, but it 
is still a social curse. The South American 
Government lotteries, one of the most harm- 
ful ways of gambling because it affects so 
large a number of people, are sources of vast 
revenues, portions of which are applied to the 
support of philanthropic institutions, includ- 
ing schools and hospitals, and the remainder 
is appropriated by the State. It is readily ad- 
mitted that gambling in the United States and 
Great Britain is not uncommon, but it is un- 
der the ban of public society. There can be 
no lotteries anywhere in this nation. Race 
track gambling is prohibited by most of the 
States and practically all other forms have 
been outlawed. Gambling is recognized by 
the public as a social evil. This is not so in the 
non-Christian countries nor in semi-Christian 
countries. 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 249 

The low estimate on human life is shown 
not only in its destruction, but also in the evils 
which society nourishes or tolerates. Social 
vice is the open shame of Japan. India's 
prominence as a land of immoral tendencies is 
most unenviable. In China it may be said 
that womanhood is carefully guarded, and yet 
the infamous traffic shows many shameful as- 
pects. In Thibet and Siam the moral status 
is low. The harem of the Moslem is notorious. 
Concubinage and polygamy with the arbitrary 
power of divorce, the conceded right of every 
husband in all heathen and Moslem countries, 
add their horror to flaunting immorality. In 
South America, Central America and the 
West Indies the tone of society is dissolute, 
and the people are distressingly profligate. 
The physical condition of vast numbers bears 
fiery testimony to this wanton fact. The sta- 
tistics of illegitimacy in these Latin countries 
are startling. In the Roman Catholic con- 
vents, hospitals and foundling homes there is 
a niche in the wall in which is a box placed in 
a cylinder which turns. Undesirable infants 
are placed in this box, the bell is rung, the 
cylinder is turned, the infant is taken from 
the inside of the building by the attendants 
and its name and parentage thereafter are 



250 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

never known. Evangelical Christianity finds 
itself in these countries face to face with wide- 
spread social vice. Because of the existing 
prohibition of all divorce the masses have be- 
come sadly indifferent to legal restraints and 
formalities. This adds an additional problem 
for all who strive to establish Christian civili- 
zation. 

The evils of government in non-Christian 
countries are little less distressing than those 
of society. The rulers in heathen history of 
all ranks and grades looked almost altogether 
upon government as simply a process of self- 
aggrandizement and exaltation at the expense 
of their subjects. Their conception of rule was 
despotism. Savage life everywhere has been 
characterized by tyranny on the part of rulers. 
The principle of despotism was not limited to 
the kings and superior officials, but it was em- 
ployed by underlings and petty officers. Op- 
pression was characteristic of all. Every one 
in power sought his victim and the higher the 
official the larger were his demands. It was 
customary not only to arraign the party ac- 
cused of wrong doing, but to make his rela- 
tives, his neighbors, and even his village, re- 
sponsible for his misdoings. This insured 
tribute. The old Korean Government liter- 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 251 

ally fell to pieces under the weight of its own 
rottenness. China's rebellion was against the 
Manchu tyrannical extortioners. Japan 
caught early the gleam of civilization and 
saved the government by gradual reforms. 
Oriental governmentalism has been for cen- 
turies marked by extortion, bribery, graft and 
every form of public dishonesty. This is just 
as true of Moslem rule. Has there come in 
the Oriental countries a complete revolution 
in governmental honesty? This will not be 
until new moral ideals have been set up. The 
reputation of Latin America is by no means 
enviable. A distinguished South American, 
at the opening of this decade, declared that the 
greatest need of his country was "honesty and 
efficiency in government.' ' Some of the South 
American governments are little above bank- 
ruptcy notwithstanding their great natural 
wealth. The octopus upon the countries is 
overgrown, extravagant and dishonest govern- 
mentalism. The revolutions that have afflicted 
Latin America in the last quarter of a century 
have been in reality raids upon the treasury 
rather than struggles for liberty ana* justice. 
As a rule they have proven lucrative to the 
revolutionary leaders. No one can deal with 
the custom houses, post-offices and other public 



252 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

concerns of these countries without being 
nauseated by the graft, bribery and out- 
rageous dishonesty that are tolerated. Presi- 
dent Cleveland spoke of "Public office as a 
public trust." Not so in the southern re- 
publics ; public office is too often simply a pri- 
vate opportunity. This is no wholesale indict- 
ment of all officials in all or any of these coun- 
tries, but rather the designation of evils which 
do exist, and which there seems to be no serious 
effort to correct. 

Deceit and dishonesty are twin sins of 
heathenism, irrespective of the countries in 
which they are found. Lying, make-believe, 
insincerity are characteristics of the common 
people of the Orient. "Nation of liars" with 
"ways that are dark and tricks that are vain" 
make a terrible and yet pitiable indictment 
against the non- Christian world. Where so- 
ciety is permeated with the spirit of deceit sta- 
bility does not exist and moral health is un- 
known. Honesty is fundamental to all social 
confidence. With the foundations of social in- 
tegrity and prosperity wanting there can be 
no hope of development and human advance. 
Commercial distrust is inevitable where artful 
and unscrupulous dealings are common. Dr. 
Arthur H. Smith, in his "Chinese Characteris- 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 253 

tics," says: "Neither buyer nor seller trusts 
the other, and each for that reason thinks his 
interests are subserved by putting his affairs 
for the time being out of his own hands into 
those of a third person who is strictly neutral. 
The high rate of Chinese interest, ranging 
from twenty-four to thirty-six or more per- 
cent, is a proof of the lack of mutual confi- 
dence. The large part of this extortionate ex- 
action does not represent payment for the use 
of money, but insurance on risk, which is very 
great." Another writer says: "Low commer- 
cial standard is a feeble phrase to express the 
dishonesty and general unreliability prevalent 
in the commercial life of China." The reputa- 
tion of the Japanese business morals three 
decades ago was notoriously bad, while in In- 
dia, Turkey and Persia the lack of business 
confidence was a national characteristic. 
Throughout the South American continent the 
higher standards of business are grievously 
wanting, while in Central America commer- 
cial standards are low in every conceivable re- 
spect. Smuggling is looked upon as cunning. 
Fraudulent reproduction and use of foreign 
trade symbols and patent reservations are car- 
ried on without shame. Imitations of Eu- 
ropean or American articles are palmed off as 



254 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

genuine. Where the commercial status is thus 
weighted with low moral standards, fraudulent 
methods and paralyzing defects, financial con- 
fidence is not possible and all enterprise is crip- 
pled. Moral hindrances which affect the com- 
mercial prosperity of a people may be prop- 
erly considered as social evils which will not 
be eliminated except by a new social morality. 



The world to-day is far from a true ethical 
basis. With great peoples characterized by a 
low estimate of the value of human life, by 
gross social immoralities, by corruption and 
inefficiency in government, by prevalent un- 
scrupulousness in business and by untruthful- 
ness and duplicity in common human relations, 
there is glaring need of a new ethical code and 
the vitalizing power of a new moral and re- 
ligious ideal. To be sure, there are good peo- 
ple and true, perfectly correct and honorable 
men and women, honest government officials 
and upright and trustworthy business men in 
all these lands, but the facts in large volume 
strongly support the position that the status 
of society is far, far below what genuine con- 
scientious Christianity could at all tolerate. 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 255 

'No just person would want to claim that the 
moral delinquencies and obliquities herein set 
forth grew out of the religious beliefs of the 
people. The moral corollaries of all religious 
beliefs would be strongly opposed to what 
really exists, but these corollaries have not 
been diligently deduced and vigorously ap- 
plied. Right here is the deficiency. A wide 
gulf has been allowed between the religious 
tenets and ethical conduct, and the blame rests 
heavily upon those religious leaders who have 
been selfishly indifferent to that gulf. There 
can be no denial of the existence of these moral 
shortcomings and transgressions, and there 
can be no denial of the fact that even now the 
religious leaders of the non-Christian and nom- 
inally Christian peoples are utterly indifferent 
to the low moral status of society. Their in- 
terest, like that of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
is in priestly functions with their pretensions 
to divine powers, and not the elevation of the 
quality of human living. 

As he has said, the Latin- American coun- 
tries are all permeated by the beguiling lot- 
teries. Lottery tickets are thrust at travelers 
at every railroad station and cried by venders 
in all the streets of the cities. The iniquities 
of this institution are well known. What Ro- 



256 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

man Catholic priest in any of these countries 
ever raised his voice against the lottery? Yet 
it was the evangelical ministry in the United 
States that made the lottery, or even the ad- 
vertisement of one, utterly impossible in Jhis 
country. The liquor traffic is nefariously car- 
ried on in all these lands, but no Roman Cath- 
olic priest, bishop or archbishop ever took his 
stand against it. Very few did it in the United 
States. The prohibition sentiment in many 
South American countries is growing at a mar- 
velous rate, but the priest is silent. Who does 
not know that the evangelical ministry of the 
United States really mobilized the forces that 
made prohibition a constitutional amendment, 
and that with very little aid from the Roman 
clergy? Social vice is notorious in Roman 
Catholic countries, but Roman Catholic ec- 
clesiastics have initiated no movement against 
it nor done anything whatsoever to abolish or 
lessen its evil? If this is true of priests who 
are called Christian, what could be expected 
of priests who are called non-Christian? It is 
true the opium curse was wiped out from 
China, but largely under evangelical Christian 
leadership. Widow-burning was stopped in 
India, but only by the prohibition of Christian 
authorities. Destruction of infants in China 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 257 

was stopped not by the activity of the native 
priests, but by the impact of Christian civiliza- 
tion. The priest of whatever faith up to this 
time has been a nonentity so far as giving 
leadership to moral reform is concerned, and 
his opportunities have been multitudinous 
throughout many centuries. 

It would be lamentably unfair to suppose 
that non-Christian peoples are wanting in ethi- 
cal ideals. One has only to examine the teach- 
ing of Confucius to find a marvelous system 
of ethics. These have been the basis of Chinese 
education for centuries and have been for 
many years in the curricula of the school sys- 
tem of Korea and even Japan. Many of his 
statements rival those of the Jewish prophets 
and psalmists, and even some of those of the 
Master Teacher of Galilee. Taoism in China 
and Shintoism in Japan with all their nature 
worship and hero worship are not without 
strong ethical implications and injunctions, 
Buddhism with its deadening pessimism is one 
long exhortation to right living and right 
thinking, although the ultimate purpose was 
happy extinction. Hinduism with its tre- 
mendous body of Vedic abstruse philosophy 
and bewildering mysticism is rich in its moral 
instruction and high idealism. No Christian 



258 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

would grant that the ethics of Confucius, of 
Laotze, of Buddha, and of the Hindu teachers 
are comparable to those of Jesus, but the con- 
tention here is that no people has been left 
without a high moral standard, even sufficient 
to high ethical conduct. The low status of 
morals is due to the disruption between morals 
and religion, to the indifference to morals on 
the part of religious leaders, and to the lack of 
real vitalization of morals by a virulent re- 
ligious faith. 

Religion was always to the ancients, as it is 
to-day to many moderns, synonymous with su- 
perstitious practices and usages. A system of 
worship apart from life inevitably brings re- 
ligion into decline and often into contempt. 
Faults in the presentation of Christianity by 
its recognized exponents have been the chief 
sources of skepticism and even antagonism to 
Christianity. A Minister of Education in 
France a number of years ago said, "The fur- 
ther men are from religion the nearer they are 
to morality and good sense." Fremantle, in 
his "The World as the Subject of Redemp- 
tion," commenting on this statement, said, 
"But the cause of this was patent, namely this, 
that the Church had narrowed itself to a cleri- 
cal sect, and that the clergy, having separated 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 259 

religion from the common life of men, had 
taught superstition and folly under its name." 
He says further, "When the Church is seen to 
be the constant inspirer of human progress 
there will be no skeptics but those to whom 
human progress is indifferent." The best 
thing that Christians can do for the faith of 
mankind is to exhibit the real power of Christ 
and the Holy Spirit as a redeeming influence 
in the whole wide field of human life. 

While evangelical propagandists are sur- 
veying and tabulating the moral delinquencies 
of non- Christian and Roman countries, they 
should not lay too much virtue to their own 
land. Here will be found much of the same 
disregard of high ethical ideals, which the 
founders of the nation have deemed essential 
to the stability and onward movement of civ- 
ilization. One can scarcely think of our mu- 
nicipal governments without being reminded 
of graft. One cannot think of the war with- 
out thinking of the shameless profiteers and 
that unscrupulous company of men who by 
their government contracts made enormous 
fortunes out of the disasters of humanity. 
Business in this country is capable of being a 
very great sinner and is very weak before large 
temptations. Our divorce courts scandalize 



260 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

us and the divorcees feel no string. Social vice 
has become infamous. Law is trampled upon 
by bootleggers and their willful patrons, by 
lynching mobs and masked parties, and by the 
increased number of safe-blowers, train-rob- 
bers and murderers. This people is not with- 
out sin, but it is also not without a militant 
moral force. The dominant Christianity of 
the country is awake to its moral obligation. 
Public opinion exists, is fearless, powerful and 
ethical. The things that are bad in Society are 
not allowed to rest and be at ease. The 
searchlight is ever flashing and radium rays 
cease not their burning. The social conscience 
is set for the eradication of social disease and 
the establishment of social health. This state 
of mind and attitude of leadership makes the 
incalculable difference between Christian and 
non- Christian countries. 



VI 

The Christian propaganda in every land is 
confronted by the immense task of creating or 
vitalizing ethical conceptions and moral stand- 
ards. If the foregoing survey has revealed the 
facts correctly, then moral progress in the 
world must necessarily wait upon Christian 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 261 

progress. That the progress of evangelical 
Christianity has stimulated moral activity by 
its very impact is well authenticated. Moral 
progress has everywhere awaited the coming 
of true ethical Christianity and always begins 
with the preaching and even the impact of 
ethical Christian doctrines. Ethical Chris- 
tianity vigorously proclaimed and strenuously 
applied in individual and social life creates a 
stir of conscience in any people and calls forth 
an assertion of the best elements of the human 
character. It is its own apologetic to the open 
consciences of the race. Its faithful exposi- 
tion will always be its own defense. This ac- 
counts for the friendly attitude toward Chris- 
tianity in the world to-day. The organized 
Church is criticized, and in many places all but 
rejected, and Christianity which is identified 
with ecclesiasticism is almost repudiated, but 
a friendly voice is always raised in behalf of 
the true religion of Jesus Christ. Men who 
have declared their contempt for the Church 
still express their admiration for Jesus, if not 
their attachment to Him. The reason is not 
far to seek. A metaphysical faith, a sacra- 
mentarian worship, and a priestly domination 
of life here and hereafter have become to them 
the meaning of the Church. Against this they 



262 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

rebel. They seek Jesus who has the words of 
life; yea, eternal life. 

The world to-day stands in dire need of 
moral integrity, moral purpose and moral 
earnestness. These cannot come simply by 
moral reform. Many peoples may need new 
and adequate moral conceptions, but the su- 
preme need of all is new moral power. "When 
I would do good, evil is present with me." 
That is man's universal testimony. The pos- 
sibilities of the overthrow of evil have never 
been made clear to the great body of humanity. 
Moral resistance is looked upon as vain be- 
cause moral incompetence has been accepted 
as fatally imposed. It is evident that there 
can be no hope of moral reform and moral as- 
sertiveness until this demonic spell is broken 
and men have been awakened to the possibility 
of a full moral life. This cannot be accom- 
plished by any mere moralist. There must be 
a dynamic charged from invisible batteries 
and connected with unfailing sources of power. 
Moral power can have no less origin than re- 
ligious power. Moral integrity must find its 
support in religious reliability. Moral pur- 
pose must be actuated by religious motive. 
Moral earnestness must be fired by religious 
zeal and stayed by religious determination. 



VITALIZING ETHICAL IDEALS 263 

Moral triumph can find no sufficient basis out- 
side genuine religion. This lays upon religion 
the unescapable responsibility for the moral 
status of the race. Religion has not always 
recognized — yea, seldom has it recognized this 
responsibility — and bent its efforts to the dis- 
charge of this crowning duty to mankind. But 
in the future in these balances shall religion 
be weighed, and woe be unto it if it is found 
wanting. 

Christianity must now recognize its double 
responsibility, of lifting up before the world 
vital ethical ideals and of supplying a religion 
of commensurate spiritual power. The ethics 
of Christianity holds the same relation to the 
ethics of other religions that the religion of 
Jesus does to the religion of Buddha, Con- 
fucius, Mohammed and the rest. Jesus was 
distinctly a teacher of superior ethics and His 
moral ideals alone form an enormous contribu- 
tion to the race. The ethics of Jesus forms a 
body of instruction of which the world to-day 
stands in great need, and without which no 
new moral standard will ever be established. 
But the ethics of Jesus finds its dynamic in 
the religion of the Christ. The Christian 
ethics is not something apart from Christian 
religion. The power that vitalizes one vitalizes 



264 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the other and any neglect of the one can only 
prove disastrous to the other. In seeking 
after eternal life there can be no trifling with 
the ideals of human conduct and the principles 
of human life. Playing fast and loose in the 
moral realm blurs the vision and renders im- 
possible any just estimate of values in the 
spiritual sphere. Religion and morals are but 
aspects of the one reality. 

Christianity carries not merely a new faith, 
but a new life. It is a religion of character. 
The redemption it assures is fundamentally 
moral. Its essential doctrines have to do with 
life. By its superiority in moral conceptions 
and achievements it makes its easiest approach 
to the non-Christian man; but it is in this 
realm that the greatest battle for vital Chris- 
tianity must be fought. The missionary prop- 
aganda in its supreme objective of making the 
world Christian is unalterably bound to that 
of making the world moral. 



LECTURE VI: CONSTRUCTING AN 
ADEQUATE FAITH 



The real goal of the missionary movement, 
however diverse its activities and comprehen- 
sive its labors, is the construction of an ade- 
quate religious faith for every member of the 
human family. It is this which gives signifi- 
cance and direction to the entire movement. 
Christianity is primarily, essentially and ulti- 
mately a religion, and what it accomplishes in 
the individual and society is the outcome of its 
religious power. Religion recognizes super- 
sensible realities and recognizes them as su- 
perior and worshipful. Christianity defines 
those invisible, intangible, superior and wor- 
shipful realities in terms of personality and 
thereby brings them into the realm of human 
relations. Religion has to do with man's atti- 
tude to the world as a whole. Christianity in- 
terprets the world as the manifestation of 
supreme intelligence, moral purpose and 
righteous will. Not only back of it all but in 
it all man finds a force like unto his own and 

265 



266 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

with which he can establish coveted relations. 
He finds himself continually in touch with the 
Infinite to whom he is akin. Christianity puts 
a new appraisal on religious values and reveals 
man's possibilities through religious power. 
The secret and center of that power is the 
creative Personality from which it sprang and 
by which it is maintained. The Christ is the 
supreme contribution which Christianity has 
to make to the world. To make Him known, 
understood, comprehended, believed in, and 
accepted by the entire race is to lift humanity 
into the upper spheres of divine reality and 
attain the supreme end of all missionary en- 
deavor. The religion of the Christ is man's 
best gift to man, as it is God's. To deliver it 
the Christian is irretrievably bound and is now 
resolutely bent. 

Religion to-day in all the earth is more or 
less in a state of chaos. The reasons for this 
are not far to seek. The cataclysm of the last 
decade shook all society to its foundation, 
broke up the old channels of thought and 
jarred, if not shattered, the faith of men in the 
moral order of the world. The bitter wail 
arose from believer and skeptic alike, the one 
in lament, the other in scorn, "Christianity has 
failed." Europe was a spectacle which no re- 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 267 

ligious faith could look upon without the 
deepest questionings of mind and heart. Many 
a soul was lost to religious reason in the days 
of that awful conflict, while many another 
came to foundations that are sure. Through- 
out the world men who thought, and never did 
so many think as then, thought seriously, so- 
berly, profoundly, about the purpose of the 
life, the meaning and value of man, the end 
of all civilization and the final destiny of crea- 
tion. To be sure, the great body of the race 
did not rise to any great height in their 
thought, but they felt the tremor of the cos- 
mic movement and have not been quite the 
same as before. Thinker and non-thinker 
alike, whether in the Occident or the Orient, 
have been left with deep questionings which 
still await new revelations of truth and new 
demonstrations of values. Some old beliefs 
have been tested and found untenable. They 
gave way in the time of crisis when most 
needed. Their foundations had been decep- 
tively laid. They can never be reinstated. 
The overthrow of cherished beliefs opens the 
way for the suspicion of all beliefs and makes 
difficult the implanting of that which is true 
and reliable. This is the state of much of the 
world's people to-day. They have cast off 



268 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

their beliefs and shut the door of their minds 
to all things religious. They can be brought 
back to faith, any faith, only by the most sym- 
pathetic and human interpretations of re- 
ligious values. 

That the religious faith of the vast propor- 
tion of mankind has been severely strained in 
these recent years cannot be gainsaid. For a 
half century Christian missionaries have been 
undermining the religious beliefs of the Ori- 
ent. Every effort has been made to show the 
inadequacy, if not the falsity, of their faiths. 
The full force of western civilization has been 
employed to demonstrate the superiority of 
Christianity and the weakness of the Oriental 
beliefs. Nothing, or scarcely anything, has 
gone from the West to the East that did not 
make for the overthrow of the established re- 
ligious faiths. Unfortunately not everything 
has made for the acceptance and practice of 
Christianity. The East has been made to 
realize that the western world, the world of 
progress, power and prospect, discounted the 
religions of Confucius, Laotze, Buddha, Mo- 
hammed and the rest and exalted only Chris- 
tianity. This fearful impact has had tremen- 
dous effect upon the confidence of the leaders 
of the East in the faith of their fathers. The 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 269 

positive result for Christianity has not been so 
great. The European conflict of so-called 
Christian nations raised unanswerable ques- 
tions in their minds as to the claims of the pro- 
ponents of Christianity. After all, is Chris- 
tianity the real religion for the race? China 
has always been a peace-loving land and a be- 
liever in the irrationality of war. Is Chris- 
tianity the religion of war? With the Oriental 
religions demonstrated to be erroneous and 
false and Christianity exhibited as incompe- 
tent in a crisis, what shall man believe? This 
is largely the state of mind toward religion in 
the Orient and the inevitable result is coarse 
materialism and defiant agnosticism. 

The Levant has been dominated by Moham- 
medanism for many centuries and that blight 
has rested heavily upon many lands. The 
blood-thirsty Turk ruled by the sword of 
Allah, while his Sultan reigned as Caliph over 
the entire Mohammedan world. The thirty 
million Mohammedans in China, the sixty- 
two millions in India, the practically full pop- 
ulation of Egypt and Arabia and vast masses 
in North and Central Africa, and much of 
Western Asia, have been taught to believe in 
the invincibility of Mohammed and the final 
supremacy of his faith. The World War was 



270 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

a tremendous revelation of the force and su- 
periority of Christian civilization and the 
weakness before it of all that Mohammedanism 
had built up. This rude shock has severely 
strained the confidence of Mohammedans in 
their religion and the Sovereign God behind 
it, of whom Mohammed is the prophet. Be- 
fore the war no Moslem was allowed to pro- 
fess Christ and live in a Moslem community. 
The well-known representative of the Young 
Men's Christian Association, Mr. Sherwood 
Eddy, reports a marvelous change in the atti- 
tude of the Moslems. He finds that great 
numbers of them are anxious to hear the Chris- 
tian gospel and some are accepting Christ. 
When there is such a break in a religious faith 
as the war made in the Moslem world, skepti- 
cism is inevitable. But the war has not done 
it all. The Levant has been looking upon 
great beacons in the Christian schools and the 
groups of devout, intelligent Christian adher- 
ents which have been gathered under mission- 
ary tutelage. The clefts in rock-ribbed Mo- 
hammedanism made by Christian forces have 
become new doors in the Near East for the in- 
troduction of the gospel of Jesus Christ. With 
a break in Mohammedanism Christianity may 
propose an adequate religious faith. 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 271 

Eastern Europe, from the Hellespont to 
the Baltic Sea, is in ignominious confusion. 
Rumania and Poland are under the dominion 
of the Roman pope. A more fanatically Ro- 
man Catholic people than the Poles cannot be 
found. The Jews of Russia and Poland, 
numbering about seven out of the eleven mil- 
lions in the world, still cling to the old tradi- 
tionalism of their race and religion, but they 
are greatly involved in the political maelstrom 
of Russia. Their religious faith is far from 
having genuine soul value. Those who get 
away and come to America exhibit a fearful 
break-down in all that made Judaism a vessel 
of truth to humanity. The Orthodox Greek 
Church before the war was dominant in 
Greece, Servia, Bulgaria and Russia. The 
Czar was the head of the Russian Church and 
its ecclesiastics were politically appointed and 
devoted to political ends. The revolution that 
played havoc with everything political, social 
and industrial in Russia spared not the estab- 
lished Church. The chaos that reigns in all 
other matters is just as pronounced in religion. 
However, even before the fall of the Roman- 
offs seventy percent of the people had little 
relation to the church. With the ecclesiasti- 
cism that directed what did exist gone and the 



272 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

leaders of the ruling parties arrayed against 
religion in every form, the condition of re- 
ligious faith can be readily imagined. Greece 
has not suffered so much, but political revolu- 
tions have had disastrous effect upon religion. 
Servia and Bulgaria and Czecho-Slovakia — 
the latter largely Roman Catholic and the 
others Greek Orthodox — have only the empty 
shells of religious formalism without the life 
and vigor of a genuine faith. In no part of 
the world has religious faith been brought to 
a lower ebb than in Eastern Europe. 

Western and Central Europe have not 
shown any marked changes. Great Britain 
did not lose religiously by the war. Ag- 
nosticism is no more pronounced, the indiffer- 
ent no more numerous ; but on the other hand, 
the churches are more hopeful and the spirit 
of unity among them has made progress. 
Germany has passed before the judgment of 
the world and her religious teachers have been 
severely censured. What the effect will be 
upon her new scholarship in Biblical interpre- 
tation and theological doctrines cannot yet be 
known. There is every reason to believe that 
German religious thought will profit by the 
fiery testing, while the faith of the plain peo- 
ple by reason of the great sorrow and pro- 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 273 

longed suffering will be held firm. France 
has long been the hotbed of atheism, agnosti- 
cism and religious destitution. The war has 
been of meager profit. The French Govern- 
ment has recently established diplomatic re- 
lations with the Vatican, but this is for politi- 
cal purposes only and signifies nothing re- 
ligiously. France feels the need just now of 
all the aid she can command for her national 
safety. This action may draw Rome from 
Germany, for whom there were many indica- 
tions of the Pope's sympathy before imperial- 
ism fell. Rome is always ready for a good 
political bargain and this has been made in es- 
tablishing governmental relations with France. 
The estrangement which has existed for fifty 
years between the Vatican and the Italian 
Government has been somewhat assuaged and 
during the Fiume episode, when the govern- 
ment needed assistance, a large number of 
high church officials were raised to places in 
the nobility. Rome has made much of the ex- 
tremities of nations to recoup her old places 
of influence and power. That religious faith 
has been strengthened in any of this no one 
would dare to claim. Not faith but fear has 
forged the new bonds. 

Dr. Robert F. Horton, the distinguished 



274 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

English Congregationalist, a few years ago, 
wrote "The Catholic Church is discredited in 
Catholic countries and flourishes only in Prot- 
estant countries by virtue of the very liberty 
which she herself has consistently denied. 
There is hardly a country in Europe in which 
the strength and the manhood are not arrayed 
against Catholicism." Again he says, "Prot- 
estantism has made the return to Catholicism 
impossible for progressive nations and for 
fearless lovers of the truth. If it has not suc- 
cessfully presented the truth of Christianity, 
it has at any rate demonstrated that the truth 
of Christianity is very different from Catholic 
truth, and it has made an impression on the 
thinking part of Europe, which can never be 
removed, that Christianity means the identifi- 
cation of religion and morality." Romanism 
for a time may be able to play a strengthened 
political role, but it can never reinstate itself 
as a religion. The choice in Europe in the 
future will be between Protestantism and ag- 
nosticism. 

Romanism still holds its heavy hand upon 
South America, but not with the same arro- 
gance as in earlier days. Its ecclesiastics have 
come to realize that only by heroic endeavors, 
if at all, can it stay the rising tide of religious 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 275 

liberty and eventual Protestantism. It is 
prominent in all political campaigns in all the 
republics, bat it suffers defeats increasingly. 
In October, 1920, its own chosen candidate for 
president of Chile was defeated by a pro- 
nounced liberal whose sympathies with Prot- 
estantism were well known. Some of the state 
governors in Brazil are out and out evangeli- 
cal Christians, while several others are anti- 
Romanist or decidedly liberal. The Roman 
Catholic Church is regarded in South America 
much more as a political party than as a re- 
ligious organization. Ecuador has never been 
entered by a great missionary Board, and it 
has less than one hundred Evangelical Church 
members, yet its constitution is surprisingly 
advanced and liberal. The turbulence of its 
history has been due to the struggle between 
the Liberal and Romanist parties. The Lib- 
eral party is now in power, but the Clerical 
party is strong and loses no opportunity to re- 
gain its domination. Society holds to the 
church as the best means of maintaining and 
exhibiting its aristocracy, and by this Roman- 
ism feels secure. In Brazil a great era of 
Church building is on. In some places great 
cathedrals are being erected. But these are 
not increasing the regard for the Church, or 



276 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

even staying the tide of Protestant sympathy. 
The alignments which the South American re- 
publics are making with Protestant countries 
are loosening the grip of Romanism. But an 
age of doubt is more apt to follow than a new 
era of genuine saving faith. In fact, South 
America is beginning to show strongly the 
tendency to skepticism in rebellion to the 
dominance of ecclesiastical hierarchy. Re- 
ligious faith, genuine, true, redemptive, must 
be yet constructed in South America before 
those countries of unlimited possibilities can 
be called truly Christian. What has been said 
of these can be just as correctly said of all 
Latin American countries. Not only so, but 
great bodies of immigrants from Latin Amer- 
ica, and Latin Europe, from Slavic lands 
and Oriental regions now in the United 
States are without an adequate religious 
faith, as understood by Evangelical Chris- 
tians. Not only has religious faith been 
severely strained by the war, but it has suf- 
fered by the infusions due to immigrant tides. 
Christianity faces to-day the most exacting 
conditions of any era in its history. Whether 
or not it prevails will depend upon its ability 
to define and defend before mankind a re- 
ligious faith that is adequate to the demands 






CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 277 

of the mind, heart and will of man in the world 
of to-day. 

ii 

Religion suffers in many lands and among 
many individuals in all lands because of a 
lack of proper basis, a sufficient ground work, 
an adequate foundation. There are often 
wanting well-founded principles, sane and 
comprehensive, to direct the worshiper and re- 
late him to the life and experience to be at- 
tained through that worship. With more than 
half the world's population religion is based 
upon incomprehension, mystery and manifes- 
tations that lie without the range of under- 
standing. All nature worship is of that kind. 
Idolatry is worship based upon incomprehen- 
sion. The sense of the supernatural is pres- 
ent but it is clothed with the mysterious. The 
ghost dance of a Kiowa Indian puts the leader 
in a hypnotic frenzy, aided by the narcotic 
effect of some herb, and this man in his wild 
dreams sees visions and becomes the oracle to 
the community. The people accept his impo- 
sitions because neither they nor he understands 
the forces that are acting upon him. The 
whirling Dervishes in Egypt come into the 
same sort of hypnotic state, and the mystery 



278 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

of it is overwhelming, and spirits are given 
the credence which intelligence would have de- 
nied. All superstition is the direct outcome 
of pure ignorance whether found among can- 
nibal tribes or civilized people. The supersti- 
tion about Friday, the number thirteen, the 
haunted house, has come down from ignorant 
people and is perpetuated by those who refuse 
to use their intelligence. Religion in the non- 
Christian and semi-Christian world is built 
upon incomprehension and as a result it sup- 
ports and is supported by all sorts of super- 
stition and symbolism. In a city of thirty 
thousand people in Brazil during the malig- 
nant epidemic of influenza in 1918 the city 
authorities had ordered that no public assem- 
blies be had for a month. In the midst of 
it all on Sunday afternoon the Roman Cath- 
olic priests in their official robes led a great 
concourse of people through the streets chant- 
ing prayers and making demonstrations about 
four images borne in different sections of the 
throng. The multitude returned to the cathe- 
dral for prayer. The object of it was to ban- 
ish the influenza from the city. "My people 
are destroyed for lack of knowledge." These 
were supposedly Christian people led by the 
priests of the pretentious Roman Catholic 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 279 

Church. When war was on between Russia 
and Japan the Czar had "icons," the church 
images, in the lead of his armies in their strug- 
gle with the "heathen." Hosea's other words 
seem applicable. "Because thou hast rejected 
knowledge I will also reject thee, that thou 
shalt be no priest to me." 

Romanism has built its system of worship 
very largely upon mystery. Why all the gen- 
uflection, making the sign of the cross, ringing 
a bell at the prayer of consecration in the mass, 
except to clothe it all with mystery! Why is 
the ritual in a dead language, incomprehensible 
to the vast majority of the worshipers? They 
claim it is to make it universal, but in reality 
it is for the purpose of mystery. Why has 
Mexico its lady of Guadalupe and South 
America its lady of Penha? Mystery! Half 
of the effectiveness of the Roman Catholic 
worship is due to mystery, the sense of the 
supernatural coming from incomprehension. 
The firm grip of the priesthood is due in no 
small way to the doctrine of the mysterious, 
incomprehensible purgatory. The perfidy of 
the entire system of bought indulgences is sup- 
ported by incomprehension. Why this con- 
tinual "Ave Maria" or "Hail Mary" as it 
means in English? There is magic in it that 



280 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

makes efficacy for the indulgences. The Ro- 
sary is a string of beads divided into ten sets 
of ten beads and separated by each eleventh. 
Each set counts a "Hail Mary." The recital 
of the Lord's Prayer at these beads and the 
repetition of the "Hail Mary" or "Ave Maria" 
are reckoned to have great virtue. By these 
repetitions indulgences come. The editor of a 
Roman Catholic paper recently stated that by 
saying a single pair of the beads, requiring ten 
to fifteen minutes, the devout Romanist may 
receive 409 years and 310 days of indulgence. 
Surely only the lack of comprehension of the 
meaning of Christianity and an understanding 
of the Bible record of Jesus Christ would tol- 
erate such ridiculous pretension. But the mys- 
tery of the unseen world, the priestly presenta- 
tion of purgatory, and the incomprehensive ele- 
ments in the worship have bound the Roman- 
ists in chains and they cannot free their en- 
slaved minds and hearts. No Protestant can 
ever hear sung the "Ave Maria" and "My 
Rosary" without being conscious of the intol- 
erable superstitions which lie behind them. 

In Tokyo I went once into a Buddhist tem- 
ple. There was much that was strange. The 
entire worship of the people seemed pitiable 
because of evident incomprehension. In the 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 281 

temple there stood a wooden human statue to 
which the people went. Those who had rheu- 
matism in the arm or shoulder or knee rubbed 
that part of the statue, expecting to get relief 
thereby from the god in the statue. "Pagan- 
ism!" one says. Ten years after I was in Para 
on the Amazon and visited the Nazareth 
Church. One room in this great sanctuary was 
filled with wooden arms, legs, heads and ships, 
street cars and other means of conveyance. 
They were brought by devout worshipers who 
had been saved from disaster on water or land 
or healed of diseases in various parts of the 
body. Was the latter any less heathen than 
the former? All over the non-Christian and 
semi-Christian countries in Asia, Africa, Eu- 
rope and Latin America these instances can 
be endlessly multiplied. Where illiteracy 
abounds as it does in practically all Roman 
Catholic, Mohammedan and non- Christian 
countries, religion is based largely upon in- 
comprehension, mystery, weakness and fear. 

It is often held that Romanism and Greek 
Orthodoxy are best for the people of certain 
countries because they are not mentally capa- 
ble of spiritual conceptions, intellectually 
formed and supported. Symbolism is the 
crutch of incomprehension and has always at- 



282 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tended worship that is based upon the mys- 
terious. Image worship is not always worship 
of the image, but rather worship through the 
image. Roman altars are always filled with 
pictures of the Virgin or statues of Jesus in 
infancy, in his acts of mercy, or in the scenes 
of his passion. Unfortunately these symbols 
for the intellectually semi-dependent become 
objects of worship to the vast throngs of men- 
tally destitute. In Latin countries images on 
cards or flags are placed in the homes, or on 
poles in the yards, to ward off evil spirits and 
to bring good fortune. This is a common sight. 
Demonology almost always accompanies sym- 
bolism and employs the images in the work 
of necromancy. What were once intended by 
the Christian Church to be aids to worship 
have become stumbling blocks in the way of 
spiritual discernment and religious comprehen- 
sion. The religion of humanity is cluttered 
up with the toys of faith made sacred by long 
usage and holy association. Before worship 
rises to the spiritual the temple must be 
cleansed. Only so will men come to "Worship 
in spirit and in truth." 

The symbolism of Romanism is its inherit- 
ance from paganism and is utterly without 
basis in anything that Jesus did or said. Juda- 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 283 

ism with its Mosaic ceremonies and laws of 
sacrifice were forever transformed by the 
spirit, teachings and personality of Jesus 
Christ. The same power will cleanse Roman- 
ism and all forms of semi-Christian and non- 
Christian thought if access to the minds, hearts 
and lives of the people can be obtained. Re- 
ligion suffers also from the dominance of hu- 
man authority so widely exercised by the 
priesthood. The day is on when the priest in 
non-Christian lands and Rome controlled coun- 
tries is not highly regarded for his personal 
piety or powers but he is obeyed because of 
the authority which is supposed to rest in him. 
The old Roman institution has always inter- 
preted and represented Christianity as the 
authority of a sacerdotal hierarchy to disci- 
pline, dominate and destine human souls. It 
admits no right of liberty in thought or action. 
In keeping with its historic spirit Romanism 
is concerned all but entirely with the observ- 
ance of traditional rites, the maintenance of 
superstitions as well as supernatural beliefs, 
the performance of its divine sacraments which 
the priesthood controls, and the promotion of 
political ends and purposes. That kind of 
an institution not only can have no part in a 
modern intellectual movement for the world 



284 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

but it even creates revulsion and provokes to 
revolution in the patrons and promoters of 
learning. The major portion of the agnos- 
ticism and atheism to be found in Europe and 
Latin America to-day, and there is very much 
indeed, can be traced to a contempt for Ro- 
manism with its tyrannical ecclesiasticism, its 
sordid traditionalism, its stubborn scholasti- 
cism and its unmitigated medievalism. The 
arrogant pretender to final wisdom and author- 
ity has no password to the precincts of modern 
knowledge, nor to the halls of liberty in 
thought, action and religion. 

The Vatican Council in 1870 declared "The 
Roman Pontiff, when speaking ex cathedra 
— that is, when performing the office of Pas- 
tor and Doctor of all Christians — he defines, 
in virtue of his superior authority, a point of 
doctrine touching faith and morals, obligatory 
for the entire Church — the Roman Pontiff, 
thanks to the divine assistance which was prom- 
ised to him in the person of the most blessed 
Peter 1 enjoys that infallible authority, with 
which the divine Redeemer endowed his church, 
when the question arises of defining doctrine 
concerning faith or morals. The definitions 
of the Roman Pontiff are then unchangeable 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 285 

in themselves and are not rendered such by 
the consent of the Church." Popes Pius IX 
and Leo XIII, great masters in Romanism, 
decreed to the subjects, "In the matter of 
thinking, it is necessary for them (Christian 
believers) to embrace and firmly hold all that 
the Roman Pontiffs have transmitted to them, 
or shall yet transmit, and to make public pro- 
fession of them as often as circumstances make 
necessary. Especially and particularly in 
what is called modern liberties, they must abide 
by the judgment of the Apostolic See, and 
each believer is bound to believe thereupon 
what the Holy See itself thinks." Think of 
there being sixteen million persons in the 
United States of America, the land of George 
Washington and Thomas Jefferson, of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Wood- 
row Wilson, in such galling bonds of intellec- 
tual slavery! Think of an Irish Republic 
dreaming of independence with such a creed 
dominating its Constitution! Is it any won- 
der that in enlightened countries to-day it is 
well believed that such ecclesiasticism is nec- 
essarily antagonistic to religion? The world 
to-day might be far on toward being Christian 
had it been served these last sixteen centuries 



286 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

by the Holy Christ Church instead of intrigued 
and dominated by the Holy Roman Church. 
The fallacy in the dogma of the infallibility 
of the Pope is to be found in the expression 
"that infallible authority with which the Divine 
Redeemer endowed his church." Evangelical 
Christianity flatly denies that any infallible 
authority was ever bestowed upon the church. 
If the Church has such authority, and the 
priesthood is the Church, then poor man is 
a victim indeed of the deficient intelligence of 
Jesus Christ who established this human slav- 
ery forever on earth, eternal in the heavens. 
Belief in the infallible authority of the Church 
is the foundation of the credulity that supports 
the unreasonable pretensions of Romanism. 
The confessional is the seat of the church, and 
whatever may be the character of the occu- 
pant, upright or vicious, all that issues there- 
from is divinely authoritative and must be 
complied with to escape wrath or to gain vir- 
tue. The Church by its infallible authority, 
dispenses merit in baptism, administers the 
actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the 
mass, makes the only possible bond between 
husband and wife, cleanses away all sin in 
extreme unction and makes clear the way to 
glory, and after death extricates the soul from 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 287 

purgatory. The Church can do all this; and 
the priesthood with its infallible head is the 
Church! That is what millions and millions 
of people, mostly illiterate, believe! The 
authority of the priesthood in the Orthodox 
Greek Church is little less autocratic! Is it 
any wonder that seventy percent of all the 
Roman Catholic and Orthodox Greek popula- 
tion of the earth cannot read or write? It is 
superfluous to think. Ask the priest! It is 
needless to read the Bible. Ask the priest! 
The Bible is what he says it is, and no private 
opinion is allowed. When will such a people 
ever be capable of rising to an adequate per- 
sonal religious faith in Almighty God and 
His only begotten Son, the complete Savior 
of all men? Yes, to make the world Christian 
is the ultimate objective from which the Chris- 
tianity of Christ must never recede. These 
gross perversions of Christian doctrine must be 
met and corrected. Similar assertions of re- 
ligious authority are found in the Mohamme- 
dan world with its quarter of a billion people. 
Religious liberty is really the possession of a 
very small portion of the earth's inhabitants. 
The authority of the priesthood with the vast 
majority is the foundation of faith and the 
rewarder of the faithful. This will continue 



288 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

so long as humanity remains three quarters 
illiterate, the slaves of incomprehension, mys- 
tery, and superstition. The despot rules from 
a throne of darkness and maintains his su- 
premacy by the weakness of his subjects. 
When Romanism becomes seventy-five per- 
cent literate instead of illiterate, and Moham- 
medanism changes its ninety percent from il- 
literacy to literacy, when priest controlled be- 
lievers come to a state of moderate enlighten- 
ment, and become capable of knowledge, rea- 
son, and thinking for self, then "infallibilities" 
will meet the shrug of the shoulder and the 
wink of the eye and authority will pass from 
decrees of masters to the testimony of reason 
and revelation. But the conditions of this 
transformation herein implied necessitate such 
a production of intelligence as only the most 
gigantic effort can bring about. The world 
must be enabled to see that religion has a 
nobler basis than the authority of man, how- 
ever that authority may seem to have been 
obtained. Incomprehension, mystery, and 
authority have their place in religion as in 
everything else in a finite world, but they 
should in no sense be determinate of the 
controlling conceptions of human life and 
destiny. 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 289 

III 

Religious conceptions among all people are 
undergoing more or less transformation. So 
great is the transformation with some groups 
and many individuals that it amounts to a rev- 
olution. While the upheaval produced by the 
Great War is responsible for much of the dis- 
turbance in religious beliefs, yet antedating 
the war forces were at work which are in no 
small way responsible for this transformation. 
Science, the scientific spirit, and the evolution- 
ary philosophy which science developed and 
largely supported have subjected all concep- 
tions and the methods of getting at the truth 
to a very vigorous examination and testing. 
Historical criticism in the last four decades 
has had an amazing influence upon the inter- 
pretation of the Holy Scriptures and the prin- 
cipal doctrines of Christianity. There has been 
much misunderstanding of what was being at- 
tempted and of what was really done. Vast 
numbers thought the "ark" was in grave dan- 
ger and rushed frantically and fiercely to the 
defense and maintenance of the grandfather 
views, while others leaped defiantly to the "new 
theology" of the grandson possibilities as the 
last word in Biblical interpretations and theo- 



290 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

logical knowledge. Grandfathers and grand- 
sons have their days but the living present is 
the responsibility of the living generation. 
Theology is not a stable thing. It changes 
with every variation in one's general view of 
the world. The theology of yesterday, true 
then with its light, may not be true to-day 
with its added light, but the theology of to- 
day, if true, has grown out of the theology 
of yesterday. A new theology which breaks 
with the past never succeeds in establishing 
itself. However, unless theology is new, fresh, 
living, it is not true. Because of the fact 
that these principles have not been kept in 
mind the religious conceptions of many people 
have suffered in the recent era of reconstruc- 
tion. Not every one has believed as Dr. R. F. 
Horton, "The scientific spirit has been the 
breath of life to Biblical study, to dogmatic 
theology, to the claims of the Church. It is 
intrinsically more reverent than the credulity 
which gulps down the superstition and the un- 
proved dogmas and the unsupported claims 
of traditions." But whether believed or not, 
it can scarcely be denied that this scientific 
spirit and its attendant influences have 
wrought remarkable transformations in the re- 
ligious conceptions of many people and among 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 291 

them the most cultured and the most virile 
intellectually. While there has been great 
gain in many quarters, on the other hand, 
there has been disastrous loss in many 
groups. 

In view of the state of the oriental mind 
and its religious beliefs, of the Mohammedan 
world and its new sense of Christian superi- 
ority, of the East European masses and their 
terrible confusion, and of the Roman Catholic 
populations and their growing rebellion against 
ecclesiastical hierarchy, what should be the 
form and spirit in which Christianity shall be 
presented for the construction of an adequate 
religious faith? There is general agreement 
that apostolic Christianity should be given to 
the world. But who shall decide what apos- 
tolic Christianity is? The Romanist and the 
Anglican, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the 
Independent and the Connectional, all have 
their own interpretation of this same apostolic 
Christianity, supported by ample evidence and 
strong reason. Ministerial orders and church 
sacraments, the forms of worship and modes 
of administration have been so emphasized as 
to become fundamental to faith with many re- 
ligious bodies. Inquisitions and ex-communi- 
cations, sectarian exclusiveness and opinion- 



292 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

atedness have resulted from the inordinate if 
not unwarranted stress on the forms, rights 
and powers of ecclesiasticism. The rite of bap- 
tism in mode, meaning and subjects, has been 
made of determinative importance with large 
groups, while the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper has become a fetish with sacerdotalists 
and an imperative passport to vast multitudes. 
The church with the Romanist has all power 
over the lives and souls of men, and the min- 
istry by the high churchman has been given 
a vicegerency of heaven, full or limited, to de- 
termine the religious and eternal status of hu- 
manity. There are also the prophetically pre- 
tentious who make bold to set times and sea- 
sons for God's activities and mark the mil- 
lennium and scenes of the Lord's physical oc- 
cupancy of the earth. Those who claim the 
effulgence of the Inner Light, or the exclu- 
sive baptism of the Holy Spirit, or the extraor- 
dinary supernatural gifts indicated in the New 
Testament believe themselves alone to have 
found the apostolic way. The higher critic, 
the lower critic, and the anti-critic critic have 
all set up themselves as the true interpreters 
of apostolic Christianity. What shall the 
world hear and believe when strident voices 
cry "Lo here," "Lo there" and multiply con- 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 293 

fusion for those already confounded ? Is there 
no voice to be lifted above all the rest that 
can direct to "the way, the truth, the life?" 
Has not Christianity some strong cen- 
tral stream where the great body of its cur- 
rent makes for the ocean of Eternal truth? 
Christendom presents to the world the aspect 
of chaos by reason of its fierce contentions over 
shades of doctrines, the significance of the 
forms, modes and rites, and the powers of its 
instruments and agents. To transfer all this 
to the non-Christian peoples is scarcely fair to 
them nor is it in harmony with the spirit of 
the Master who said, "Go teach all nations." 
Yet, just this is being done. 

The contention for the faith once delivered 
to the saints, so ardently enjoined upon the 
early disciples, has frequently been interpreted 
to mean contention for beliefs or formulas of 
beliefs as stated in some early period or by 
some patristic ecclesiastical council. Ortho- 
doxy is often made to mean conformity to 
formulas of doctrines set forth by eminent men 
in some early or middle century of the Chris- 
tian Era. But orthodoxy is not conformity to 
a static mass of religious conceptions meta- 
physically expressed, but to a stream of theo- 
logical thought channeled by the great religious 



294 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

thinkers of its age. What reason is there to 
believe that the fourth century or the fifth, 
or the sixth, with its Mediterranean center of 
religious life and thought was more capable 
of formulating a correct orthodox theology 
than the twentieth with its world comprehen- 
sion, scientific information and philosophical 
generalization and the rich accumulation of 
fifteen centuries of illuminating experience and 
majestic thought? Dogmas out of which for- 
mal theology is produced are always metaphys- 
ically conceived and expressed, and the meta- 
physics of the age of creed making have al- 
ways been determinative of the formulas of 
Christian doctrines. The impatience of this 
era with the historic dogmas and creeds is not 
due to any loss of interest in and concern for 
their real Christian doctrinal content but to a 
lack of sympathy with the metaphysics of the 
periods in which these historic statements 
came into form. The interpretation of the 
contents of these statements do not always, by 
any means, coincide with those of the formula- 
tors of the statements, and they show variety 
according to the interpreters. Where is the 
orthodoxy? In the agreement with the early 
creed formulators or with the main body of 
the late Christian interpreters? In other 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 295 

words is living Christianity in its theological 
conceptions a voice or an echo? 

The Christian propaganda has reached the 
point where these questions are thrusting 
themselves into the foreground. Evangelical 
Christianity has fought the battle for religious 
liberty and is still in the fray. What is re- 
ligious liberty? Liberty for what, from what, 
and to do what? Ruskin once heard a sermon 
in Turin which he said made him turn away 
from religious faith. He said, "A little 
squeaking idiot was preaching away to an 
audience of seventeen old women and three 
louts that they were the only children of God 
in Turin and that all the people outside the 
chapel, and all the people in the world out 
of sight of Mount Viso would be damned." 
Narrowness that breeds contempt and latitudi- 
narianism that practically annuls conviction are 
enemies to Christianity and deaden its appeals. 
Intolerance in the Protestant of the twentieth 
century is just as censurable as the intolerance 
of the Romanist of any century. An inquisi- 
tion is odious in any period in any form, or 
by any people. On the other hand the toler- 
ance that is so broad and liberal as to make 
friends of anything and stand for nothing cre- 
ates no convictions, produces no faith, sup- 



296 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ports no movements, achieves no ends, and is 
almost as detestable as intolerant narrowness. 
Religious liberty is fundamental in Christian- 
ity but religious conviction founded upon rev- 
elation and experience and supported by rea- 
son is the essential dynamic in all religious 
propaganda. But the Biblical revelation, the 
theological interpretation, and the Christian 
experience are not possessed entirely by any 
one man or one school of thinkers. No greater 
mistake is ever made by a Christian than when 
he supposes that he has the complete vision 
of religious things. Finite beings are made 
so as to be the complements of each other at 
getting at the whole truth and they get the 
truth only as they recognize this relation and 
the necessity of man to man. In order to ar- 
rive at reliable religious convictions recogni- 
tion must be had of the possible correctness 
and value of the views of other persons who 
have been equally diligent and honest in the 
search for the divine truth and equally de- 
voted to the divine Teacher and Lord. 

The peril to missionaries is the side track 
in theology, the switch in Biblical interpreta- 
tion, the narrow gauge in Christian experience. 
One is an advocate of the advanced theology of 
the new school, one a defender of the old hard 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 297 

dead creed, one is a second blessing sanctifica- 
tionist, one an oil and prayer healer, one a 
premillennialist of the pessimistic ready-at- 
hand-coming type, one a Sabbatarian or other 
literalist who interprets by the letter as he 
likes and by the spirit when he must. Each 
is vociferously doing his utmost to make a main 
line out of a side track and to use a Mogul 
engine on a narrow gauge road. Collisions 
and wrecks have been unavoidable and the re- 
sulting loss of life has been incalculable. To- 
day the track of the missionary in every land 
is strewn with the debris of this short-sighted 
strife for the propagation of bits of beliefs, 
largely speculative in character, narrowly ac- 
cepted in Christendom and of limited impor- 
tance in the Christianization of the world. 
Christianity is worthy of a higher presentation 
of its majestic values than such limited though 
devout representatives have given. Trunk line 
Christianity only with its broad gauge, its 
powerful locomotives, its solidly constructed 
cars filled with imperishable, well-ripened, life- 
giving truth in charge of a strong, capable, 
efficient force can carry salvation to this 
world. Humanity crowds the stations when 
it arrives and acknowledges the impact of a 
mighty dynamic when it passes. It awakens 



298 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the world by its movements and feeds man- 
kind with its cargo. It has speed, drive and 
capacity for continental service. Sects and 
denominations may label the cars, but the con- 
tents should be only what the spiritually fam- 
ished world requires to live. When trunk line 
Christianity has right of way, switches will be 
closed and side tracks shut off, and without 
this Christianity must come to a standstill and 
await the clearing of the way. 

Missionaries have a very great responsibility 
as representatives of those who send them out, 
but vastly more as the factor in presenting 
Christ and the teachings of which He is the 
center. The Gospel is their comprehensive 
message, but preaching the Gospel is more 
than reciting some formulas of a bygone age, 
or proclaiming the speculations as to some 
future possibility. The Gospel is God's age- 
less message to the age. Men are not preach- 
ing to-day to the people of the fifth century, 
or the tenth, or the fifteenth, or even to the 
nineteenth. The people of the twentieth cen- 
tury await God's message to them in terms of 
their life and thought. The people of the fifth 
century would have been bewildered by the 
speech of this day filled as it is with concep- 
tions of which they had no dream. The con- 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 299 

ceptions of the fifth century are too limited 
to bear to this century the full gospel for pres- 
ent day humanity. What is true of the cen- 
turies is equally true of the countries in the 
different degrees of development. The faith 
of every age must find expression in the life and 
thought of that age and not independent of 
them. Teachings that ignore the scientific and 
the philosophical thinking of their era may ap- 
peal to the ignorant, the credulous, the imagi- 
native, but they discount Christianity to the 
thoughtful, the forceful and those capable of 
fashioning the world to the high standards of 
an adequate religious faith. The doctrines of 
Christianity are not embalmed beliefs handed 
down from apostolic days or patristic periods 
but the living, throbbing, thrilling energies of 
essential religious thought and experience that 
link man and God to-day in the issues of this 
present life. A religious faith to be adequate 
to the age must harmonize with its life, throb 
with its energy and issue in purposeful, puri- 
fied personality. The Gospel that men are 
called to preach is the power of God in this 
day in and through Jesus Christ to redeem 
the entire world and everything in it, and to 
establish His reign in the earth. 

The outstanding question which every pro- 



300 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

mulgator of Christianity is compelled to an- 
swer is what are the bases, the elements, and 
the enduring support of a religious faith that 
is adequate to the time, the place and the 
conditions in which humanity lived? The 
propaganda that carries Christianity to the 
non-Christian and semi- Christian peoples car- 
ries also intellectual enlargement with its 
varied science and extensive philosophy. Shall 
the pathmaker for knowledge be turned upon 
because of its own offense to religious reason? 
This will happen if the Christianity preached 
is not true to the essentials in religious belief 
and faithful to the vital religious conceptions. 
The world is not being converted to creeds but 
to Christ. Salvation is not in shades of doc- 
trines but in flames of truth. Men do not 
need to be led into the by-ways of religious 
speculation but out, and to the hilltops of 
world vision where transfigurations transpire 
and divine fellowship is realized and heavenly 
aspirations are awakened. History is the best 
prophecy. In God's footprints men will find 
the direction of his present and future move- 
ments. He has not changed his course. He 
has published his destination and the way of 
his journey, and signs of His progress mark 
the wayside. It is all this the world wants 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 301 

to know, and needs to know, and is lost be- 
cause it does not know. Christianity must 
be true to history, obedient to reason, replete 
with knowledge that God be revealed and that 
man gets related to the eternal things. An 
adequate faith must find God, get His course, 
see his footprints, comprehend his purpose 
and lay hold on His realities. There are many 
other things that are valuable, some impor- 
tant, but these are essential, if this world sets 
Christ at the center of its life system. Make 
the Kingdom of God the chief aim and all 
these other things will come to their rightful 
place. 

rv 

The basis for an adequate religious faith 
is a body of irrefutable facts assembled from 
revelation, study of nature, and the experi- 
ence of the race. The human reason must be 
conceded the right to a determining voice in 
the validity of the facts. Faith cannot admit 
what reason absolutely rejects. Faith is called 
upon to go beyond knowledge, but it must 
go from knowledge and not independent of 
it. While rationalism is too short-armed for 
faith, yet faith is too fundamental in human 
life to be irrational. Hope that is reason 



302 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

grounded and girded is confident and issues 
in conscious power, but the hope of hazy un- 
certainty and doubtful authority leaves life 
wavering. The best destroyer of such dark- 
ness and the fear that is consequent thereof 
is light — light emanating from constant truth 
and stable realities. Religious conceptions that 
carry unquestionable assurance, unswerving 
stability and irresistible force are based upon 
undeniable facts. By the facts of revelation, 
the facts of knowledge, the facts of religious 
experience Christianity will win its case in the 
world, and in no other way. The Christian 
faith can be produced only by the Christian 
facts. No amount of esthetic beauty, or phi- 
losophical analysis, nor any kind of authority 
can take the place of facts for faith. The re- 
ligious debility so common even among sin- 
cere people is due largely to an absence of 
a factual basis in their religion. Religion that 
is a sort of esthetic hobby, a kind of insurance, 
or a program of irksome duty is wanting in 
perspective and lacking in basic principles. 
Christianity is not only a body of principles 
but a record of historic facts, concrete and 
outstanding, visible and intelligible to men, 
and its coming to neglected peoples must bring 
daybreak to humanity and sunrise to a sleep- 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 303 

ing or groping world. The facts of Chris- 
tianity constitute its supreme apologetics to 
the intellectual elements of the race. 

The supreme authority in religion is truth, 
and because Christianity claims to have the 
truth that sanctifies and redeems it is its prov- 
ince to make known the facts of life, human 
and divine. The Holy Scriptures form the 
faithful record of man in his progress of re- 
lationship to Almighty God from creation to 
his exaltation in the incarnation. The early 
man in all his crudity, animalism, dullness of 
comprehension and childish conceptions of God 
is portrayed with as great faithfulness as the 
Master from Tarsus with his prodigious sweep 
of intellectuality, his vast depth of religious 
comprehension, and his sublime interpretation 
of the Son of God. Everywhere and at all 
times God is diligently and earnestly seeking 
to establish connection with his human chil- 
dren to whom he would reveal, as they are 
able to receive, the secrets of his eternal pur- 
pose. It is not authority over them but fel- 
lowship with them that He would establish. 
When humanity was in its childhood His 
directions were conceived as statutes and form- 
ulated as laws, but in its maturity they are 
reckoned eternal principles and made basic in 



304 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

noble free living. God's laws are the expres- 
sion of His nature and not the corrective 
measures for a rebellious race, except as they 
lift humanity to the loftier conceptions. The 
Holy Scriptures when interpreted as the pro- 
gressive revelation of God and development 
of man is a record of facts upon which has 
been based the highest religious faith of the 
race. The perversion" of this sublime and holy 
record to be an infallible dictum, in every word, 
of an Almighty sovereign, set upon despotic 
rule, is to take from man the beauty, the glory 
and the virtue of this Holy Book. It is this 
that has been done for the Koran of the Mo- 
hammedans. The Koran is the sword of a 
despotic earthly sovereign; the Holy Scrip- 
tures is the sword of the Holy Spirit whose 
province it is to teach all things and bring 
to remembrance and effectiveness Christ's 
teaching and deeds. The word of God in the 
life of man is the preeminent pivotal aim about 
which the entire Holy Scriptures revolve. 

The Roman Catholic Church has denied to 
its adherents access to the Holy Scriptures, 
ascribing as sufficient reason the incapability 
of the people to understand the Book and the 
consequent danger of error. The further rea- 
son might have been added, the denial of the 






CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 80ff 

right of private opinion in religious matters. 
Romanism has always bitterly fought, and still 
fiercely contests, the circulation of the Scrip- 
tures in the countries where it is predominant. 
However, it is a fact that the Holy Scriptures 
have often been grossly misunderstood and 
even among devout Christians it has beeni 
variously construed and been made to support 
many doubtful theories of life, doctrine, and 
interpretations of divine realities. There are 
many splendid incidents of individuals com- 
ing into sublime conceptions of religion and 
exalted experiences of Christian faith through 
the simple reading of the Scriptures, but the 
great body of humanity requires instruction, 
leading, guidance, in the Holy Book in order 
to get a proper appreciation of its truth and 
an adequate understanding of its revelation. 
The most important work of a missionary, 
whatever else he may be trying to do, is the 
honest, faithful, intelligent, illuminating teach- 
ing of the meaning, contents and respective 
values of the Scriptures. The missionary who 
cannot teach the Bible, plainly, freely, hon- 
estly, is lacking in the most essential qualifica- 
tion for service in the foreign field. Unfortu- 
nately not all who consider themselves qualified 
for this service have the accurate knowledge, 



306 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the proper perspective, and competent compre- 
hension of its purpose to make the Bible the 
real Book of revelation to the unevangelized 
world. Many Bible instructors are so obsessed 
witn theories which they feel compelled to pro- 
mote that they make the Bible run altogether 
to the establishment of these theories. The pre- 
millennialist, for instance, is usually very in- 
dustrious in Bible teaching, but always with 
the objective of showing that the second com- 
ing is imminent, as the evil times and the 
prophecies from Genesis to Revelation clearly 
prove. The Second-blessingist is always em- 
phasizing the double spiritual experience of 
men from the patriarchs to the latest apostles. 
The Sabbatarians print and distribute millions 
of pages of literature with the avowed purpose, 
above everything else, to break down the ob- 
servance of the Lord's Day and to stress the 
literal Sabbath of the Jews. The Divine Heal- 
ingist is attracted by all the cases of illness 
and the pre-medicine method of healing them. 
The Epistle of James, the last chapter espe- 
cially, with its reference to the anointing of 
the sick with oil and the prayer of the elders, 
is the chief book in the Bible, even if Martin 
Luther did speak of it rather contemptuously 
as a book of straw. The Bible, God's Holy 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 307 

Book, will never get to the people through 
teachers who use it simply to support a theory 
or establish some peculiar doctrine. The Bible 
must be taught by those who seek its truth 
and can find in it what God and men are, and 
the divine purpose and plan for establishing 
the eternal unity between them, and who can 
make the Book the living voice of the ever- 
speaking God in his fatherly appeal to man, 
His Son. These matchless Scriptures have 
been discounted by the petty ends to which 
they have been subjected. They can come to 
their greatness and dignity only as they re- 
veal the stately steppings of Almighty God 
and the redemptive processes of high heaven 
for the elevation of the race to the plane of 
transcendent righteousness and power. The 
missionary is enjoined to be a "faithful dis- 
penser of the Word of God" and to this end 
the Bible should be a well-known book, in con- 
tents, meaning and purpose. 

In order to the construction of an adequate 
religious faith in the people of the earth upon 
a stable basis, the missionary must not only 
know and teach the Bible in its entirety and 
in the light of modern devout scholarship but 
he or she must know thoroughly the elemental 
and fundamental elements of Christian doc- 



308 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

trine. The missionary, whatever the peculiar 
field of service, must never overlook the prime 
motive in his or her going or being sent. 
The world needs science and its myriad appli- 
cations. A new and better philosophy is in- 
dispensable to the reconstruction of thought. 
Vocational and avocational training is a neces- 
sity for the new industrial era which should 
be ushered in. The new trade relations and 
the present diplomatic alliance may call for 
service in their advancement. All this the 
missionary may do, but it must never be for- 
gotten that religion is the motive, and religion 
is the end in all missionary endeavor. These 
other objects may be attained without the mis- 
sionary leadership, even though the greater 
part up to date has been done by his leader- 
ship, but the adequate faith will come only 
through the missionary. So what is the re- 
ligion that the missionary, fevery missionary, 
has gone forth to teach? What interpretation 
of religious values will he or she make that 
is vital, necessary, compelling in their appeal? 
What is the Christian view of nature, of so- 
ciety, of government, of the mind, of the soul, 
of life, of death, of destiny? In what respects 
is Christianity the complete religion and in 
every way adequate to the needs of the human 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 309 

spirit and the wants of the human heart? 
These questions the missionary is sent to an- 
swer. 



The fundamental element in the Christian 
system is its doctrine of God. Christianity 
assumes at the foundation the existence of an 
Infinite Personal God, a Heavenly Father of 
absolute Power. The conception of God, how- 
ever, does not take on vividness and acquire 
force until it attains the sense of essentiality. 
The doctrines of the Gospel do not become 
vital until God becomes the ultimate reality 
in personal and cosmic life. The conviction 
of the reality of God as revealed by and in 
Jesus Christ is the creative force in developing 
the Christian system of thought and experi- 
ence. Man interprets his religious experience 
in terms of his theology and he interprets his 
experience with Almighty God in terms of his 
doctrine of God. Take, for instance, prayer. 
For what may a person pray? The Roman- 
ist prays to or through saints and the Virgin 
Mary. Why? Because of his conception of 
God. To him God is too terrible to meet face 
to face. To those to whom God is a father, 
direct communion in prayer with this father 



310 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

is the most precious privilege. What is it 
that God and man must do together, and that 
God cannot enter upon until man announces 
in prayer that he is ready for cooperation in 
this united task? The entire philosophy of 
prayer is based upon one's doctrine of God. 
It is most important to hold in mind what 
Professor Samuel Harris once said, "If God 
is going to do anything He will do it like 
God and not like man." The doctrine of the 
atonement has taken form according as man 
has considered God as an imperialistic King, 
an oriental judge, or a sympathetic father. 
The doctrine of the incarnation becomes a 
stumbling block to one who fails to find be- 
tween God and man an eternal kinship. The 
doctrine of the Trinity is confusing in the 
extreme unless the doctrine of God shall allow 
the expressions of deity found in the Son and 
the Holy Spirit. No adequate religious faith 
is possible, until there is a clear, comprehensive, 
exhaustive doctrine of God as the central tenet 
of all religious beliefs. 

Along with the doctrine of God must be put 
the doctrine of man. Any religion that leaves 
man and God at a distance from each other 
is wanting in an essential element. "What is 
man, that God is mindful of him; and the son 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 311 

of man, that God visits him?" This question 
of the ancient psalmist, raised in wonderment, 
the missionary is sent to the religiously illiter- 
ate people of the earth to answer. This can 
be done only if he or she know the meaning 
of man, the significance of Sin, the purpose 
of a Saviour and the plan of redemption as set 
forth in the Holy Scriptures. 

Teachers of Christianity to the religiously 
untutored or wrongly taught throngs must 
deal directly with the fundamental elements 
of man's personality which include self-con- 
sciousness, self-determination and self-knowl- 
edge. A large proportion of the prejudicial 
if not disastrous theological blundering of sin- 
cere religious thinkers is due to an extraordi- 
nary degree to their utter lack of a competent 
psychology. The mind of man is the instru- 
ment of his faith as it is the agent in his knowl- 
edge. Too many teachers of religion seem to 
take no cognizance of the fact that as man's 
mind is, so his faith will be. An exhaustive 
knowledge of man such as genuine psychology 
gives will put to rest, or vanish to indifference, 
many speculative theological theories so long 
divisive of Christians, and reduce to a paltry 
state many of the differences now existing be- 
tween the creeds and forms of the various de- 



312 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

nominations. Many of the strifes over predes- 
tination, possibility of apostacy, second bless- 
ing sanctification, and Holy Ghost baptisms, 
and posture in prayer, the meaning and man- 
ner of the Lord's Supper, the common and 
individual communion cup, the use of the or- 
gan and other musical instruments in the 
church, the mode of baptism, the right and 
power of only certain ministers to baptize or 
administer the Communion, are due almost 
entirely to the psychology in the case. Spirit- 
ualism, theosophy, the most of Christian Sci- 
ence, fanatical faith healings, whether by 
Saints' bones, or Saints' manipulations, hang 
on the clouds in the psychological sky. 

The teacher of Christianity should be ac- 
quainted with man. The religion of person- 
ality must find personality for its realm and 
the approaches thereto as the chief channels 
of its operations. But psychology alone will 
fit no man to teach the Christian religion. 
Man is not only a thinker ; he is a sinner. Why 
is he a sinner? What is the consequence of 
his sin? What is the provision that has been 
made for his transformation? The doctrines 
of sin and salvation are vital in any mission- 
ary's equipment for giving the world an ade- 
quate religious faith. Back of these and in- 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 313 

terwoven with them is the doctrine of the per- 
son of Jesus Christ and the philosophy of the 
redemption which has been accomplished in 
him for man. The missionary is required to 
be in possession of the great trunk lines of 
Christian doctrine when he or she goes forth 
to construct an adequate religious faith for 
three-fourths of the world's humanity. Many 
young men and young women are offering 
themselves as teachers of religious education. 
Education in religion is the primary need, but 
before there can be the teaching of religion, 
there must be the knowledge of religion. Com- 
prehensive knowledge of the Christian religion, 
of the great source book in revelation and of 
man, and an experience of personal salvation 
in Jesus Christ are essential to any proper 
equipment for that missionary service which 
mankind now needs. Such equipment is no 
less essential to any just presentation and com- 
petent promulgation and promotion of Chris- 
tianity in the home lands. In this day there 
is an urgent call for persons to teach Chris- 
tianity who really know what Christianity is. 
The hope of the world ultimately rests upon 
a real religion. What is real religion? That 
is the ever recurring question. Many factors 
are involved, the chief being man himself. 



314 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Man is not a constant quantity, but variable 
with the infinite variety of the species. The 
Oriental and the Occidental are types of mind 
as well as classes of peoples. What is real 
religion to the one may not be real religion 
to the other. Until there is standardization of 
intellects in the earth, there cannot be uniform- 
ity in religious conceptions. Different view- 
points give different views of the object. Man 
is not constituted for viewing things in this 
world in completeness. He gets but broken 
views and consequently forms opinions which 
deepen into convictions that are limited, par- 
tial and defective. This is the penalty of be- 
ing finite. It is a heavy strain on many people 
to be finite. Such a limitation lays the obliga- 
tion of recognizing the possibility of the one- 
sidedness of one's own view and the further 
possibility of a different and even correct view 
from another side. It is here that man clas- 
sified himself as tolerant or intolerant. Re- 
ligion is the one subject that allows many view- 
points and opens the possibilities of varying 
conceptions. Charges of heresy may be, and 
frequently are, more the evidences of inability 
to comprehend the other's point of view than 
indications of error in the other's conceptions. 
Some one has said, "There are times when the 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 315 

heresy which seeks and prays and suffers is 
much nearer the source of life than an intel- 
lectual orthodoxy incapable of comprehending 
the dogmas that it keeps embalmed." It takes 
all points of view to get any just and satisfac- 
tory opinion of the world, and the same may 
be said of religion and especially Christianity. 
The crime of Christendom has been its bitter 
divisions due to divergence of views necessi- 
tated by the multiplied points of vision. What 
is real true Christianity cannot be answered 
by one man or group of men. The answer in 
completeness must synthetize the views of 
Christ-filled humanity. 

Since the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem two 
very distinct types of mind have been exhibited 
in their consideration of the facts and doctrines 
of Christianity. The Shepherds saw and heard 
the marvelous chorus; the Wise Men of the 
East followed the conjunction of the planets; 
and all found the Lord. Each group was 
peculiarly qualified for what it saw and heard. 
The Judaistic type has always been impressed 
by signs and wonders and bound by forms, 
ceremonies and formulas of faith. The Hel- 
lenistic type is inclined to seek truth by logic, 
reason and a distinctly intellectual method. 
Miracles with the first group are always pri- 



316 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

mary evidences; with the latter, they are sec- 
ondary and are urged not so much as won- 
ders as works of love and mercy that reveal 
the divine goodness of the miracle worker. 
The first group is always engrossed in the tem- 
poralities of faith and the physical hopes of 
prophecies, and is usually the slave of literal- 
ism and the victim of functions of the priestly 
kind. The extremists of this class are Zion- 
ists, Dowieites, Russellites, Mormons, Holy 
Rollers, and Come-outers of all degrees; but 
many devout souls are bound by some strands 
of this same literalism and physicalism. This 
group usually designates itself as conservative, 
although it is usually very radical in its con- 
ceptions, its operations, and in its demands that 
all men think its thoughts as it thinks them. 
This group in the foreign field is very prone 
to be exceedingly insistent that those of the 
other type are heretics, have denied the funda- 
mentals of the faith, and are bringing ruin 
upon the Christian propaganda. Not infre- 
quently the leaders in this radical conservatism 
have had little training in theology, none in 
psychology and philosophy, and have had lim- 
ited opportunities in the school for developing 
the mind or the thought processes which the 
great issues of theology require. 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 317 

The other group has led in the modernism 
of all the periods. In the recent decades it 
has promoted the textual and historical criti- 
cisms, the discoveries in archaeology, the con- 
struction of the recent theologies, the inaugu- 
ration of the sociological studies and move- 
ments, and has emphasized the salvation of the 
entire world through the establishment on earth 
of the Kingdom of God. It has had in much, 
if not most of all this, the opposition and the 
criticism of the first group. It has led in many- 
instances to just as objectionable and danger- 
ous extremes as the first. The Hellenism of 
the early centuries was the parent of Gnos- 
ticism and all the rationalistic teachings of 
that time against which the Apostles and the 
early fathers had to contend vigorously. From 
this attitude of mind have come the natural- 
ism and agnosticism of these later centuries 
that have been so dissipating to spiritual life. 
The rationalist is so irrational as to claim that 
his comprehension of all truth is the only com- 
prehension there is. He denies not only the 
intimation of superhuman intelligence but also 
the validity and possibility of collected com- 
prehension. He denies the existence of any 
thought outside his thought. He is of the 
earth earthy, and carnal withal. The first 



318 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

group is fond of calling the second group ra- 
tionalistic and thereby damning it eternally in 
devout minds. But in truth the rationalists no 
more represent the great group of the reason- 
ing, intellectual and scholarship type than the 
Mormon and the Dowieite represent the fac- 
tual, traditional and literalistic type. Call- 
ing each other names and aligning each other 
with heresy of an outgrown past or heresy of 
a too pretentious present and a far-off possible 
future cannot make for the establishment of 
an adequate Christian religious belief in the 
non- Christian and semi- Christian world. The 
genuine Christianity that is to meet the chal- 
lenge of the world must have a clear-cut reve- 
lation of the meaning and purpose of God, 
man, and the world, and of the divine energy 
by which all things live, move and have being. 
There has been too much materialism in re- 
ligious thinking. Too much emphasis has been 
put upon the edibles, the mansions, and the 
ecstatic experiences of the other world, and 
too little on character, divine relationships and 
high objectives in life. Personalities, and not 
carnal bodies with the appetites and aspirations 
originating therefrom, are the true concern of 
genuine Christianity. Christ arose from the 
dead not to demonstrate the worth of the body 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 319 

but the power of personality to re-clothe itself 
for the world in which it is to live and operate. 
He boldly asserted, "I am the resurrection 
and the life." Through the personality of the 
Divine the personality of the human is en- 
dowed for eternal life. It is personality in 
which God, Christ, and man have their com- 
mon claim. Religion, to be adequate, must 
lift man's personality to the level of divine 
relationships. The constructors of genuine re- 
ligious faith must promote a Christianity that 
meets the requirements of the intellect, sensi- 
bilities, and will of developed humanity. Only 
a religion that meets the demands of developed 
humanity will be the requisite force for devel- 
oping humanity. 

Teachers of religion must recognize the two 
types of mind in the world and set themselves 
intelligently to fit Christianity in its forms of 
statement and application to the minds of men, 
and at the same time to fit the minds of men 
to receive and assimilate the comprehensive 
truth of Christianity. Religious faith cannot 
be established by the cravings of animalism, the 
claims of literalism, or the demands of intel- 
lectualism, and the doctrinal deductions which 
they incite, but only by the synthetic revela- 
tion of that personality, creative and command- 



320 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ing, which exists and binds together God, 
Christ and man. The mission work of evan- 
gelical Christianity would be greatly hindered 
if not severely endangered by the overpower- 
ing predominance of one type of mind in its 
instruction and ministry, just as historic Chris- 
tianity has suffered by the predominance of 
the Roman mind. Both types are necessary to 
a proper and adequate revelation of the truth. 
Paul and James supplement each other. Jesus 
used Thomas as well as Nathaniel. The Bible 
contains the hortatory and argumentative 
books of Isaiah and Romans as well as the 
apocalyptic writings of Daniel and Revelation. 
The Christian church of this day may learn 
wisdom of its masters and the way of truth 
from its Lord. 

VI 

The world was never more in need of a com- 
petent Christianity. Unprecedented dangers 
are imminent. The backwash of the Great 
War has produced a tide of reaction in gov- 
ernment, in economics, in thought and in reli- 
gion. A backward movement in almost every 
phase of life, threatening time-tried ideals, 
seems to have set in. One of the leading 
American editors writes, "Some are daring to 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 321 

exhort us, in the days of the backward tide, to 
seek out the 'old time religion.' We need su- 
premely, however, a fresh, new-time religion, 
alive, vibrant, aggressive and conquering. The 
future of the world in these days of awful 
crises depends almost solely upon the church 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, for this is the only 
institution left with great resources of saving 
idealism.' * This editor, however, is optimistic, 
as he says, "We are on the verge of a new 
and glorious age, with a new vision of God, a 
new epoch for faith, a new conception of hu- 
man freedom. The coming Kingdom is about 
to become a more tangible and visible thing 
than ever before, as the living Christ more and 
more finds his place in human hearts and lives." 
In the midst of a world situation more terrible 
than was ever known before, when the wisest 
men seem baffled and the strongest appear de- 
feated, faith in God is the sure and abiding 
hope, the foundation for a new world order, 
and the supreme factor in the construction of 
a competent civilization. 

Europe needs to-day new religious ideals, 
new conceptions of man and the world, and 
a new consciousness of God. It is to-day the 
world's greatest mission field, because by its 
life, thought, and power, it is determinative of 



322 MAKING THE WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the conceptions, ideals, and even convictions of 
four-fifths of the world's population. Europe 
has lost its hold on eternal values. Reparation 
commissions may assess indemnities, but 
Heaven alone can repair the losses. The re- 
covery of a Holy Faith following the reclama- 
tion of the Holy City and the Holy Land 
would be the consummate victory of all the 
centuries. Were Europe and America Chris- 
tian there would be no more heathen in two 
generations. Alexander Hamilton once said 
of this country, "It is ours to be either the 
grave in which the hopes of the world shall be 
entombed or the pillar which shall pilot the 
world forward." This may be truly said to- 
day of the evangelical Christian Church and 
especially in America. The world is weary 
of pretense and exhausted by ecclesiasticism. 
It wants a new expression of character, a new 
exhibition of love, a new demonstration of the 
Christ spirit, a new projection of the Christ 
program, a new display of spiritual power in 
the human life, and a new sense of a living and 
present Christ. This is the time for every 
Christian to face forward, and fight valiantly, 
to drive back the deadening forces of ex- 
hausted beliefs and support the new majestic 
movement for the world's Christianization. 



CONSTRUCTING ADEQUATE FAITH 323 

Making the world Christian! The idea is 
thrilling! The very conception is dynamic. 
It gives sweep to the imagination, depth to 
thought, and consuming purpose to consecra- 
tion and service. But this is not possible by 
any instantaneous process, any one generation 
program. There must be the time exposure 
and the processes of life and construction. 
But the ages belong to God. He has under- 
taken the salvation of the world and there is 
no place for discouragement. The enormous 
task is within His powers. Equipped with the 
Christ plan of human redemption, reinforced 
by genuine Christian character, inspired by 
unfeigned Christ love and energized by re- 
demptive spiritual power, man valiantly goes 
forth to deliver to the world a competent 
Christianity and to construct for all humanity 
an adequate religious faith. With Robert 
Morrison we may boldly declare this day, "The 
outlook is as bright as the promises of God." 



THE END 



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